Eat Your Tomatoes!
I have a Kuwaiti friend who grows tomatoes, and was grousing because this year’s crop wasn’t as abundant as last year’s. Two short weeks later, he changed his tune.
“Come get tomatoes! We have all the tomatoes in the world!”
He had planted a large variety this year, partly because I wanted to see how some American “heirloom” seeds would do here. Either the climate is a little funny this year, or the heirloom seeds just take a little longer, but oh, what a crop there is! One of my friends said “it is like eating tomato candy!” Some of them are that sweet!
Just a little balsamic vinegar and a little of the best olive oil, a little fresh ground pepper and a little salt – oh, what heaven.
But there were so many, we cooked up a tomato sauce, just tomatoes, not even any onions. It was magnificent.
And then in today’s Health News, we learn that in addition to helping us have a healthy heart, eating tomatoes can also help protect our skin against the sun:
(photo courtesy BBC News)
From yesterday’s BBC Health News. (You can read the entire article by clicking on the blue type.)
Tomato dishes ‘may protect skin’
Pizza and spaghetti bolognese could become new tools in the fight against sunburn and wrinkles, a study suggests.
A team found adding five tablespoons of tomato paste to the daily diet of 10 volunteers improved the skin’s ability to protect against harmful UV rays.
Damage from these rays can lead to premature ageing and even skin cancer.
The study, presented at the British Society for Investigative Dermatology, suggested the antioxidant lycopene was behind the apparent benefit.
This component of tomatoes – found at its highest concentration when the fruit has been cooked – has already been linked to a reduction in the risk of prostate cancer.
Now researchers at the universities of Manchester and Newcastle have suggested it may also help ward off skin damage by providing some protection against the effects of UV rays.
Anti-ageing paste?
They gave 10 volunteers around 55g of standard tomato paste – which contains high levels of cooked tomatoes – and 10g of olive oil daily. A further 10 participants received just the olive oil.
After three months, skin samples from the tomato group showed they had 33% more protection against sunburn – the equivalent of a very low factor sun cream – and much higher levels of procollagen, a molecule which gives the skin its structure and keeps its firm.
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