Healthy Tomatoes

Lecture: HEALTHY TOMATOES by Åke Truedsson (Sweden)

The tomato belongs to the Solanaceae family together with potatoes, bell peppers, chili pepper in all forms and many other plants. Once upon a time the tomato was born in the Peruvian Andes in South America where still wild relatives grow today. Tomatoes were used and possibly grown by Inca Indians and tribes before them and spread this fruit to a larger area from what is today Chile to Mexico. In Mexico they were for sure grown and bred into larger forms by Aztec Indians and who called this vegetable tomatl or xitomatl. The Europeans got tomato seeds from the Aztecs, seeds that arrived to Europe first with Christopher Columbus in 1504 and later with Hermán Cortes 1521. While spreading the tomato in southern Europe, it was very well received by Italian cousin, who were boiling it in olive oil with pepper and garlic. England did not feel the same way about this newcomer and gave the Latin name “Lycopersicum” – “Wolf peach” to the tomato plant. In a UK cooking book from 1602 it is written “tomatoes can be eaten if well cooked, if eaten raw death will come immediately”.

In Italy this new fruit was called “Pommi di Moro” – “Apple from the Mores” (Mores - North African people that lived in south east of Spain). The French got the Italian name slightly wrong as “Pomme d’amour” – “love apple” that became the name in northern Europe for a long time. This name made church in the US to classify tomato growing as sinful and at least one priest were dismissed from duties because of growing tomatoes. Much later the name tomato was adopted from the Aztec Indians. So after many soap stories tomatoes eventually concurred the world and have today become one of our important food crops with a yearly production of around 100 million tons.

So what is a tomato? It contains at least 93-95 % water, only 14 calories per 100 g, so to live of them alone requires a lot of kilos consumed per day, but the remaining 5-7 % is carotenoids, (lycopen, beta-carotene, lutein, phytofluene, phytoene, zeaxantin, alfa carotene and neurosporene), chlorogenic acid, sophorin, p-courmaric acid, flavonoids (like quercetin and kaemferol) together with minerals (potassium, calcium, phosphorous, iron, copper, cobalt, chromium), vitamins C, E, folic acid, B1, B6, pro A and fibers. This 5-7 % not water makes the tomato to one of our most healthy and disease protecting fruit on earth. It can prevent a lot of the diseases that in our world causes so much pain and sorrow and take away many good people far too early.Unfortunately it is so that a lot of the food that we eat and the drugs we take cause cancer and will also cause heart diseases, stroke, diabetes, dement diseases, early aging and more.