Heirloom tomatoes can be found readily at your local farmers market, co-op, or Amish produce stand, and come in a wide variety of colors, shapes, sizes, levels of acidity, and places of origin. These simple facts make choosing an heirloom tomato over those glossy franken-maters sold at the supermarket a good choice. Let's look at a few reasons why that is true.
Colorful Heirloom Tomatoes Make For a Healthy Diet
There is quite a bit of research showing that the compounds that color our fruits and vegetables have some powerful health-altering affects. According to an article on WebMD, “Many red fruits and veggies are loaded with powerful, healthy antioxidants-- such as lycopene and anthocyanins -- that may do everything from fight heart disease and prostate cancer to decrease the risk for stroke and macular degeneration (the leading cause of blindness in people aged 60 and older). Antioxidants soak up damaging free radicals.”
It's clear to see that having a variety of colors in one's diet is important, so why stick with just red?
Besides heirloom tomatoes being a good source of Vitamin C, potassium and beta-carotene, they are also about 90% water which makes them a low-calorie food source, good for those counting calories as well as those striving to intake more water on a daily basis.
Buying Heirloom Tomato Varieties Is Environment and Farmer Friendly
We all know that buying crops grown via monoculture on huge factory farms has its negative side. Supermarket tomatoes may or may not be shipped from a thousand miles away, using up a lot of fossil fuel, after having been picked green and allowed to ripen during shipping. And it can be tricky to tell if the ones you're buying are those type.
They usually look shiny and bright but sometimes they're short on flavor and can even be a little sour. A post on OrganicAuthority.com states, “Tomatoes have also been bred for higher yields and durability—or in other words, quantity, not quality. Farmers may have less spoilage and healthy looking crops, but that says nothing about what happens once the tomato enters your mouth.”
Eating good heirloom tomatoes grown by local farmers and growers keeps us out of this unrewarding circle of flavorless food and puts money back into the local economy.
Heirloom Tomatoes Are Kid Friendly
Any mom or dad knows that kids can be choosy when it comes to vegetables. Allowing your child to browse through the different heirloom tomatoes while shopping, choosing the different colors, patterns, and funky shapes he or she likes, will get them engaged with their food and encourage them to try new types of foods.
Spaghetti marinara or meatloaf are always kid-approved meals. Try making your own homemade marinara or meatloaf topping and swap out the store-bought canned tomatoes in favor your child's favorite heirloom tomato variety. Who knows, it might even make purple or black spaghetti sauce! Plain ole red tomatoes just don't offer that kind of excitement.
Heirloom Tomatoes Are A Link to Tradition
If you are like so many people these days who prefer to link their eating habits to those of their ancestors, then heirloom tomatoes might be the right fit for you and your family. It can be very rewarding to grow and eat the same kinds of foods as our pioneering forefathers and to share these traditions with our loved-ones.
For example, the Cherokee Purple variety is over 100 years old and was originally grown by the Cherokee people, native to the area around Tennessee. The German Stripe is a German variety. Canestrino is an Italian plum heirloom tomato variety grown in Tuscany. The Brandywine variety most likely dates back to 1880. The Purple Russian variety comes from Ukraine. You can really tie your food back to your native region with heirloom tomatoes. You certainly can't get that from a supermarket shelf.
Conclusion
You could get by eating the regular tomatoes provided by the supermarket, but there are certainly some advantages to trying a few heirloom tomato varieties that will enrich your food experience.
You can get these heirloom tomato seeds along with many other varieties of heirloom vegetables over at Amazon.com by clicking here
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