Friend of mine Yuri Elkaim has written a lot about energy and better health. One of his recent articles is dealing about tomatoes. I like to quote his excellent writing:
We have a tomato plant on our patio and it’s amazing how tasty naturally grown, pesticide-free tomatoes taste in comparison to the commercially available garbage.
I love tomatoes but I should warn you that many people have a sensitivity to the nightshades which includes tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini, and cayenne pepper. If that’s you, then you may want to skip this section. Because regardless of how good a single food is, if your body can’t tolerate it, you’ll be doing more harm than good if you consume it regularly.
Tomatoes have been getting a lot of acclaim over the last decade or so as more and more studies are showing the cancer-reducing effects of their main antioxidant – lycopene.
In the tomato, lycopene protects the seeds from damage by oxygen and light. We also consume those benefits. The BBC television series The Truth About Food showed that lycopene can offer some protection against sun-induced skin damage.
In this show/study, the group of volunteers who consumed 16 mg of lycopene per day showed less reddening of the skin and less DNA damage than the non-lycopene group.
Unfortunately, the subjects were using supplemental lycopene and to achieve the same effect from whole tomatoes you’d need to eat at least half a dozen.
Lycopene is a fat-soluble substance and therefore eating tomatoes in conjunction with healthy fats can enhance it’s absorption. I knew there was a reason why Italians love their tomatoes and olive oil!
Another healthy component of tomatoes is the yellow gooey stuff that surrounds the tomato seeds. This fluid contains flavonoids that have anti-clotting properties, making tomatoes a beneficial food for cardiovascular health.
These are just 2 of hundreds of healthful compounds contained in tomatoes. The message I’m trying to get across is that taking ONE of these compounds by themselves is nowhere near as beneficial as eating the whole tomato. Think synergy!
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