Food Worship #2: The Tomato

It's hard for me to imagine a food with as many benefits as the humble tomato.  Is is a fruit?  A vegetable?  Something else?  I'll tell you what it really is, A SUPERFOOD!

I absolutely love tomatoes.  I chomp into whole ones like apples, and I pop cherry tomatoes like grapes.  At the salad bar at school, I'll finish my dinner, and my salad, then I'll head back to the salad bar and grab a good five or six more cherry tomatoes just to finish off that great meal I just had.  They are undeniable one of my favorite foods of all time, and will always be a staple in my diet.

I implore you to try to fit more tomatoes into your diet.  There are so many reasons to love them, and at the end of this article I plan to reveal a secret about tomatoes that I bet will convince you to have a few more in your salad today.

Tomato Benefits:

Tomatoes are extremely nutrient rich.  They are very high in beta carotene, a nutrient that helps keep you healthy by keeping that immune system running top notch.  It'll also keep your skin healthy, as well as other inner body tissues.  This decreases risk of infection and will help to fight off any new bugs you might come in contact with this winter.

Tomatoes have large amounts of Vitamin E and C, which will help keep your heart in great condition.  In fact consuming a few more tomatoes may help in decreasing your risk for heart disease, and might also decrease blood pressure.  Believe me, you really want your heart to stay healthy.  I know I want mine to stay ticking away, considering I demand so much of it in the gym every day.

Vitamin C will also help you to absorb other nutrients from your meal more effectively.  So basically, tomatoes not only help your body, they help those other foods you've eaten to help your body.  That's a win-win situation if I've ever seen one.

Guys, tomatoes are one of the best foods you can eat if you want to keep your prostate healthy.  And believe me, you DEFINITELY WANT that.  Tomatoes can help stave off prostate cancer (as well as other kinds of cancer).  Not many foods can claim to be so proactive in preventing cancerous growths as tomatoes can.  Eat a few more and feel a little better about your future.

Tomatoes taste amazing and are also very low in sugar and simple, starchy carbs.  This means they are low on the GI scale, and will not spike your insulin levels very much at all.  In fact, Tomatoes, like sweet potatoes, can help regulate your blood sugar, and keep your metabolism running quickly and efficiently.

Tomatoes are also very high in fiber.  That'll keep your digestive tract healthy.  And all of those gym rats on a bulk, a high fiber diet in compliment with your high protein meals will keep you from putting on excess fat because it slows digestion and allows your body to more easily metabolize the food you've eaten.  Lean muscle, that's what I'm talking about.

To finish up, tomatoes are very low in sodium, high in chromium, and contain no saturated fat.

Phew!!!!!  That's a good food, if there ever was one.

But I promised you a special secret about tomatoes.  We all know a good sized tomato is about the size of a large apple.  The apple will have around 100-150 calories.  The tomato?  Only 30!!!!!  Wow!  Talk about a healthy, filling snack that will barely even register on your daily calorie count.  Even cherry tomatoes only have about one calorie per tomato.  That's just plain awesome in my book, and definitely puts them on the podium to be worshipped as the super food they are.

I plan on posting a bunch of tomato related recipes at a later time.

Bite into a few, and try not get any on your shirt.  Good luck!

Not Full Yet? Here's why

I'm going to go out on a limb and bet that once or twice your diet plans have been hampered by accidental overeating.  And while my most recent article explains why you shouldn't EVER feel bad about this, let's examine why it happens.

A big reason why people tend to overeat is because they don't feel full at the end of their meal.  They've just crammed down an entire can of Pringles, and within twenty minutes they're hungry again.  They're a little confused, but can't really fight their stomachs and end up eating more.  Probably another can, because the first one was so tasty.

But those were a lot of chips.  Why didn't they fill you up?  Or that entire soda, you could feel it in your stomach, but for some reason it did nothing to quell that ravenous hunger.  It's curious, isn't it, and I bet you'd like to get some foods in your diet that would really fill you up quick without actually consuming that much of it. But could such a food exist?

Of course they exist, and I bet you've eaten them and felt their effects without even realizing it.  Vegetables!  Seriously, vegetables will fill you up quickly with relatively few calories.  Try it some time.  Sit down to dinner sometime and pile a large heaping mound of veggies onto your plate.  Don't be shy about it, one cup of broccoli is something like 30 calories, and a cup of corn on carrots or peas is around a hundred.  Go ahead and eat three hundred calories worth of vegetables, and I can almost guarantee you'll be full for hours.  In fact, don't go overboard, because sometimes they fill you up faster than you'd think.  I've gotten stomach aches from eating too many vegetables before, not fun!

Why though, do these little super foods fill you up so nicely?  It's because they're high in FIBER!  Fiber is a remarkably brilliant little nutrient that does a lot of good things for you.  I plan to devout an entire article to it at some point, but for now we'll just say it helps keep your digestive tract in tip top shape.  Fiber is also indigestible by itself, so it makes your body work hard to move it through your system.  But in general, fibrous foods get you full faster, and keep you full longer.

Want more fibrous foods?  Grab an apple, a pear, a peach, or basically any other kind of fruit.  An apple is a great snack to fill you up quick if you get those afternoon munchies.  Fruit also has another added bonus, it's full of water, the greatest stomach space-filler known to exist!  Water will help keep you full by taking up room in that seemingly endless stomach of yours, and I guarantee you'll feel it.


Another great tip, if you're still hungry, before you go back for more food, drink a glass of water.  An entire glass.  Not only should you feel pretty full afterwards, but sometimes your body can get it's "hungry" and "thirsty" cries mixed up, and after some fresh water you may feel more satisfied than you thought.


So now it isn't a mystery anymore why those potato chips and that soda don't fill you up.  Potato chips are very low in fiber, and have high calories for the amount of food material that you consume.  That's a recipe for over eating.  And soda?  It's filled with High Fructose Corn Syrup and other cheap artificial sweeteners, which are designed not to spike your insulin levels as drastically, which, while that can be a good thing, also tells your brain that your body hasn't gotten enough nutrients, and that you're still hungry.

Try some fruits, veggies, and a glass of water.  Who knows, you might be full for hours.  Eat well, keep healthy, stay full.