Selfsufficientish.com

There you go, I just knew there was a reason why I grow and eat so many tomatoes.
Selfsufficientish herbalism ?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-19869666

Interesting.

I like this:

"The results support the recommendation that people get more than five servings of fruits and vegetables a day, which would likely lead to a major reduction in the number of strokes worldwide, according to previous research."

Good food = good for you, bad food = bad for you. People who eat more fruit and veg eat less bad crap and its the bad crap that has negitive effects on your health.

There hasn't been a huge amount of research into lycopene and its potential benefits to health, but what has been done gives encouraging results suggesting strokes, heart attacks and some cancers are all reduced by a diet high in the red stuff. Like most cheap stuff, pharmaceutical aren't madly interested in pursuing work that would yield them little direct income and might even undermine lucrative drug sales, but I suspect that as health budgets tighten, government funded research into cheap, effective, dietary preventative medicine might get a lift.

And tomatoes taste good.

I read sometime ago that cooking tomatoes makes the lycopenes more available and they were advising people to eat more tomato purees and even tomato ketchup which has high concentrations, even more reason to make and bottle your own organic passata and ketchups

Nah - doesn't work. Over 60 years of stuffing tomatoes down my gob, and I'm still a grumpy old sod.

Mike

It's a potential medicine, not miracle, Mike!

MKG wrote:Nah - doesn't work. Over 60 years of stuffing tomatoes down my gob, and I'm still a grumpy old sod.

Mike

" We had noticed"

diggernotdreamer wrote:I read sometime ago that cooking tomatoes makes the lycopenes more available and they were advising people to eat more tomato purees and even tomato ketchup which has high concentrations, even more reason to make and bottle your own organic passata and ketchups

Particularly when cooked with oil - lycopene is fat soluble. There's also a pile of salicylates (aspirin like molecules) in tomatoes that may have an action: too little research again.

The Riff-Raff Element wrote:

diggernotdreamer wrote:I read sometime ago that cooking tomatoes makes the lycopenes more available and they were advising people to eat more tomato purees and even tomato ketchup which has high concentrations, even more reason to make and bottle your own organic passata and ketchups

Particularly when cooked with oil - lycopene is fat soluble. There's also a pile of salicylates (aspirin like molecules) in tomatoes that may have an action: too little research again.

It is interesting what turns out to be good for you. We live in Bulgaria, lots of things are red, wine tomatoes, peppers more wine No, really one traditional Bulgarian preserve is Lutenitsa, red bell peppers, tomatoes albergene and sunflower oil, all in one good stuff it turns out!
Anyway, we made this film a couple of years ago if anyone wants to make it, scale it down and do it in the kitchen on the stove simple as a pimple :-) http://www.inbulgaria.co.uk/Lutenitza.html

http://www.durgan.org/URL/?RJSIZ 17 September 2012 . Tomato Juice.Sixty pounds processed

Shame that every one of my plants got blight this year. Every year I dream of having a tomato glut and end up with courgettes

I took cuttings from my cherry tomatoes in the garden which i grew from seed this year. Got 7 cuttings and they've all rooted! I gave one away because im not going to have enough space on the livingroom windowsills for them all. I'll probably give away a couple more plants. Maybe i'll have cherry tomaotes ready for christmas? To go with the sweet potatoes i also have in a big tub in the livingroom which will hopfully grow over winter and produce some yummy sweet potatoes for christmas dinner!

i just spent more then $300 on over 100 kinds of tomatoes as the govt here is introducing new bio-security measures that will effectively cut tomato seed imports - some of the strictest in the world as of June next year if both parts pass unmodified. 100+ kinds of open pollinated and heirloom tomatoes can never be a bad thing though aye? . . .

That's a bit of a bummer Jed. As it's imported seed I assume that varieties already in NZ will be OK, so a wise move on your part.
I'm still trying to find my ideal varieties to grow, the idea is that when (if) I find them I will be able to ignore what seed companies, governments and Monsanto think I ought to be growing.

My winter tomatoes are now starting to ripen, just as the greenhouse ones are starting to fade.

My tomato wall .............