Try More Tomatos

 

When I was growing up on Long Island, every year my dad would plant a vegetable garden. Sometime in the late summer we would get a few scrawny lettuce plants, some radishes and, in a good year, maybe some beans and peppers. It seemed like an awful lot of work for what he got from it.

But for the tomatoes. They seemed to thrive in the hot, humid NY summers and pulling one off the vine and eating it was a summertime ritual. Does anything taste so good as a freshly picked tomato? 

If you think that the tomatoes you buy at the grocery store just don't measure up, you're right. "In an attempt to produce firm, round, red, pest-resistant fruit, big agriculture accidentally bred out the gene that gave tomatoes their flavor," says Amanda Bontempo, a dietician at NYU Langone Medical Center. If that were not bad enough, they are usually picked well before they are ripe to allow for transportation to the stores. That is why the ones you see in the grocery look gorgeous but are hard as stones and tasty as salt water.

If you prefer tomatoes similar to those of your childhood summers, you might try growing your own. You can get the plants already started and they generally will do well indoors in a warm, sunny spot. If like me you have a brown thumb, try to find locally grown tomatoes or grab them at a farmer's market in season.

In addition to being delicious, tomatoes are loaded with lycopene, a powerful antioxidant. Like all antioxidants, lycopene neutralizes free radicals that oxidize (we'd call it rust if we were made of iron) compounds in your body and cause cells to break down over time. They play a role in cancer, heart disease and many diseases associated with aging. Antioxidants are protective against oxidation.

A 2020 study found that men who ate tomatoes almost every day had nearly a 30% lower risk of developing prostate cancer than men who didn't. Lycopene is also believed to be protective of skin cancers and to help maintain bone mass as we age.

Surprisingly, cooking tomatoes increases both the amount and the absorption of lycopene compared with eating them raw. It is also fat soluble, so having tomatoes with olive oil or a little cheese enhances your ability to absorb the lycopene. There is no recommended daily intake for lycopene but as little a 7mg per day is thought to be beneficial.

Not all tomatoes are red. Yellow tomatoes contain lutein, which may help reduce the risk of developing age related macular degeneration. Orange ones pack a lot of beta carotene, which your body converts to Vitamin A. You can also find purple, green, brown and black tomatoes. All of them are healthy choices.

Many people avoid eating tomatoes because they contain solanine, a compound that causes inflammation and which may be toxic in large quantities. (Solanine is common in Nightshades, which include peppers, eggplant and potatoes as well as tomatoes.) But the amount of soalnine found in tomatoes is extremely low and there is no clinical research supporting the theory that they have an inflammatory effect. In fact, the research suggests just the opposite, that tomatoes have a fairly powerful anti-inflammatory effect.

So go on and enjoy your tomatoes. Try a few unfamiliar varieties. And definitely use than in your cooking.