Sunday, September 11, 2011

Fruit or Veggie? My Tomato findings!

I was trying to think of where to start and since my background is a picture of tomatoes I went with it :) Did some research and holy tomato! They are amazing! so lil bit of history, historians believe the tomato plant started in South America as a common weed. But then aztecs in Peru were like 'wait a minute, maybe we can eat these things!'... so time goes on and they make simple recipes with these juicy plant things and then someone from Spain (either Cortez or Columbus.. nobody knows) comes and discovers the aztecs special lil fruit (or veggie, whatever you want to call it). He takes it back to Spain, and people there fell in love with it. Not too long later, someone from Europe bring it back to their homeland and boy did it spread! Everyone was falling in love with this new discovered plant which they eventually called..... TOMATOES!... didnt see that one coming did you ;) lol anyways from parts of Europe they spread around the Mediterranean, out to Great Britain and back to the United States. And whala! we have our history of the tomato. :) So the tomato I also found out is loaded. When I say loaded, Im not joking, it has sooooo many nutrients! Let me name some : Vitamin A, Vitamin B, Vitamin C, Calcium, Phosphorus, Potassium, Vitamin K, Iron, Protein, and lycopene!  Those are the ones I found, but I wouldnt doubt if it had more. So what do all these nutrients do? Well the lycopene is the thing that makes it red, and it acts as an antioxident... basically its fights and neutralizes free radicals which are what start cancer. Other nutrients do things like act as a blood purifier, help strengthen eyes, help with skin texture and color and make tastebuds happy (thats a super inportant one).... Now when you go to the grocery store those bright plump juicy tomatoes you see will have a whole new meaning wont they! :) And once you buy a few of them (btw go for the brightest red ones) you can have at it with an extremely nutritional fruit... or vegie.. whatever... now if there arent any fresh tomatoes, have no fear! Tomatoes do NOT lose nutritional value when they go through the canning process so if you get them canned, they still are super healthy, and when you cook any tomato, even more health benefits will be released :) so have at it! Any other input? I would love to hear more about the tomato, also please post any really good tomato recipes if you have one :) Thanks!

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