I’ve really enjoyed your comments about cucumbers after my Good Life letter a few weeks ago.
There is a real underground movement in favour of what I had always thought of as a staple but uninteresting salad vegetable.
I was thinking about this on Easter Monday as I pottered in my little greenhouse, where I am starting to grow tomato, cucumbers, green peppers, and chilli plants.
These might be known as trendy superfoods, but if you grow them yourself, they may as well be.
Let’s look at some of them….
The Benefits of Tomatoes
A humble fruit rather than a vegetable, the tomato is one of the most versatile of all the summer salad crops. For instance:
- They have a very high level of lycopene, the compound which gives the fruit its deep red colour. This is one of the most powerful natural antioxidants.
- Tomatoes can significantly lower serum lipid oxidation and therefore can reduce the incidence of macular degeneration diseases which are the most common cause of visual impairment in the western world.
- Due to high levels of vitamin A, tomatoes are great for keeping hair strong and shiny, as well as looking after your teeth and nails. You can even use the skins as a tonic for your own skin!
- Heart conditions can benefit from a diet rich in tomatoes which is due to the amount of potassium and vitamin B in them, which act to lower blood pressure and reduce cholesterol levels.
- As we approach summer it is often a good thing to try to kick the tobacco habit, but did you know that tomatoes can be beneficial in protecting you from the damage that smoking does to you? Tomatoes contain chlorogenic acid and coumaric acid, which help to fight against some of the carcinogens present in cigarette smoke.
By the way, I do appreciate that some people can occasionally have an inflammatory response to tomatoes – but I’ll explain all about that in Friday’s letter!
The Power of Green Peppers
Always seen as the bridesmaid in a salad, these are nutritional powerhouses in their own right, and probably deserve to get a better press.
- Just one green pepper contains over twice your daily requirement for vitamin C alone, and we know how many benefits we get from this: reducing the impact of aging on cells; improving the health of our lungs, skin, gums and teeth and even reducing cancercausing free radicals in the body are just a few.
- Peppers can also legitimately be thought of as brain food due to the high levels of vitamin B6 which supports the nervous system and is in high demand from the brain.
- Colon cancers are prevented by a doublepronged attack, firstly because of very high levels of folic acid (which is also helpful for mums-to-be) and secondly as a result of the amount of fibre present which aids gut motility.
- Again, smokers can be protected from some lung dysfunctions such as emphysema from a diet rich in peppers, which is due to their ability to help tissue healing (vitamin C) in combination with their antioxidant properties and vitamin A content, which has proven to be deficient in smokers due to a common carcinogen in cigarette smoke, benzopyrene.
The Joy of Chillies
I can’t deny my love of spicy foods – indeed that is why I grow so many chillis each year.
Believe me there is no better way to warm the cockles of your heart than a home-made curry.
- Chillies are an excellent source of vitamins A, B, C and E with minerals like molybdenum, manganese, folate, potassium, thiamine, and copper. Chilli contains seven times more vitamin C than oranges.
- The antioxidants present in the chilli wipe out the free radical bodies that could build up cholesterol causing major heart diseases such as atherosclerosis.
- Chillies can also help to dilate the airways to improve breathing function and can be very useful to help sufferers of asthma and even hay fever.
- A natural painkiller they can be used to reduce the discomfort of arthritic and joint pain, muscle spasms and even toothache.
- Diets rich in chillies encourage gut health and help the body rid itself of waste products.
I could go on, but I think you get the idea about my amazing greenhouse health store!
As a final push to get you to grow your own this year there is one global benefit to greenhouse gardening – it gets you outside and into the sun, so if nothing else you get a daily dose of vitamin D; and that’s no bad thing
