Description:
Tomato is a popular, versatile, easily grown plant with a great tasting fruit. Naturally tomato is the favourite of home vegetable gardeners and is widely cultivated and used throughout the world. Tomato is technically a fruit not a vegetable but, they belong to the vegetable garden.
Tomatoes are now eaten freely throughout the worle, and their consumption is believed to benefit the heart among other things. They contain lycopene, one of the most powerful natural antioxidants. Especially in cooked tomatoes, has been found to help prevent prostate cancer but other research contradicts this claim. Lycopene has also been shown to improve the skin's ability to protect against harmful UV rays. Natural genetic variation in tomatoes and their wild relatives has given a genetic treasure trove of genes that produce lycopene, carotene, anthocyanin, and other antioxidants. Tomato varieties are available with double the normal vitamin C (Doublerich), 40 times normal vitamin A (97L97), high levels of anthocyanin (P20 N;ie), and two to four times the normalamount of lycopene.
Uses:
Tomatos are used either cooked or raw and are low in calories and an excellent source of Vitamins A and C. Uncooked tomatoes also provide Vitamin E. Nutritional value of Tomato are 18 kcal, 3 g carbohydrate, 1 g protein, 0.2 g fat, 10 mg calcium, 0.4 mg iron, 0.6 mg vitamin A, 25 mg vitamin C per 100 g serving.
Tomato is acidic; this acidity makes tomatoes especially easy to preserve in home canning whole, in pieces, as tomato sauce, or paste. Tomato juice is often canned and sold as a beverage; unripe green tomatoes can also be breaded and fried, used to make salsa, or pickled.
