Tomatoes have many benefits for our bodies, they are to prevent cancer, osteoporosis and heart disease.
Fresh tomatoes or tomatoes have cooked that have more benefits?
The answer is tomatoes have cooked. Why? because the content of antioxidants in tomatoes potentially more after cooking. However, fresh tomatoes have many benefits too, in addition to health, fresh tomatoes can also be used for beauty. It can be a mask, mask tomatoes believed to make your skin look fresher and younger.

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Consumers, grocers and restaurateurs at all levels of our nation's culinary food chain are heading to farmers' markets, pick-your-own and organic food farms, and otherwise utilizing community supported agriculture resources in droves. This as awareness escalates that high value, locally farmed food is good for our health, communities, local farmers and farmland; is economical (often less expensive than the grocery store), convenient, and fun to source; and that it tastes great. For these reasons and more, championing the local food movement is University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point food and nutrition professor and registered dietitian Jasia Steinmetz, author the newly released title "Eat Local: Simples Steps to Enjoy Real, Healthy & Affordable Food" -- a simple, step-by-step roadmap for improving diet and nutrition with local, sustainable and organic food choices.

Just last month the U.S. Department of Agriculture revealed a whopping 17% annual growth for the U.S. farmers' market trade, alone, with its 2011 report citing, "more farmers are marketing their products directly to consumers than ever before." Findings also reveal that several states have experienced rapid farmers' market growth since 2010, with some states realizing a staggering 46% growth rate in one-year alone. Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan underscores the implications and significance of this increase, noting, "The remarkable growth in farmers markets is an excellent indicator of the staying power of local and regional foods. These outlets provide economic benefits for producers to grow their businesses and also to communities by providing increased access to fresh fruits and vegetables and other foods. In short, they are a critical ingredient in our nation's food system."

With the extraordinary amount of interest in locally farmed food comes an inevitable array of questions and even concerns amid a marketplace hungry for information and insight. Among other tasty tidbits, Steinmetz is available for interview and editorials on an array of timely and compelling "local food" topics also synergistic with her book and otherwise, including, but not limited to, the following:

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The next time you think about throwing out those aging strawberries or very ripe grapes, consider this: Belgian scientists report that fruits and vegetables do not lose any antioxidant content in the days after purchase, even as tell-tale signs of spoilage appear. In some cases, antioxidant levels actually rise.

The life of a post-harvest fruit or vegetable is traditionally defined in terms of visual appearance and texture. While this is good for aesthetics, these benchmarks disregard flavor and nutritional quality--especially with regards to antioxidants, which are affected by genetic, technological and environmental factors. "No important studies were done to evaluate the influence of storage on antioxidant capacity," the authors said.

To that end, Claire Kevers and colleagues obtained various produce from the Belgian market, measuring its initial antioxidant content. They then stored the fruits and vegetables at room temperature or refrigerated them at 39 degrees Fahrenheit, checking antioxidant levels at various times until the produce presented visual spoilage.

The results showed that, in the days following purchase, fruits and vegetables do not lose any phenolic compounds, ascorbic acid or flavonols -- a trio of chemical classes associated with antioxidant content. "Better, in some cases, an increase on the antioxidant capacity was observed in the days following their purchase, accompanied by an increase in phenolic compounds," the researchers state.

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Gracie Sung says the large koi pond in the center of her restaurant is considered good luck in her Vietnamese culture. You could also call it a bribe. Sung and her husband had helped open and operate the China Village in Newburgh when they first moved to the Evansville area 15 years ago. When their work with that restaurant ended, Sung took up hairstyling at Klein's.

At first she wasn't interested in helping at her husband's new restaurant, which he called Gracie's, on north U.S. 41. "But I always loved fish and I said if I was going to work, I had to have a koi pond," Sung said.

Now she has one at home, too. Sung was a Vietnamese refugee who came to the United States when she was 15 years old. Her family first settled in California.

Sung's husband first came to Evansville to help friends open a restaurant, and he liked what he saw, Sung said. "So we moved here."

"It was a good place to raise children." The couple has three children — two sons, Randy, now 25, Andrew, 16, and a daughter, Sandra, 15.

Gracie's offers menu and buffet service, and we sampled both on a recent weeknight. No shortcuts here. The crab rangoon was freshly made to order, not just picked off the buffet and served as I have seen in other restaurants.

The waitress also agreed to make a special dish we used to order at the old House of Chong — cashew chicken, with battered and fried chicken served in a brown sauce.

I found the buffet surprisingly fresh even toward the end of the shift. In addition to egg drop soup and a delicious hot and sour soup was a chicken and corn soup that was particularly nice.

The crab rangoon from the buffet was as good as that, freshly made to order. The filling was flavorful and the wrappers were quite thin and so crisp they shattered, rather than broke, when bitten. I also liked the egg rolls and the large fried chicken wings.

The buffet boasts about 50 items ranging from sweet and sour chicken to green beans and sugared fried doughnuts for dessert. I particularly liked the curry chicken, which had a nice hit of hot spice. I wished the coconut chicken had more coconut flavor. The beef with black pepper was particularly flavorful, with a rich brown sauce and slices of green and red peppers and onions. Sung credits her husband for collecting good recipes through the years.

Lo mein is another of my favorites, and Gracie's version was quite fresh and good. Sung said they hadn't expected such an expansion in business when they first opened the restaurant, so the coolers aren't large enough to hold supplies for more than a day. That plays into the freshness of the offerings because the restaurant gets fresh food deliveries six days a week.

The attention to detail and care of customers even late into the shift gives an indication that this is not just a business. Even if it takes another pond, Evansville is lucky to have Gracie in this restaurant.

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As Hurricane Irene passed over the borough last week, downgrading to a tropical storm, it continued on a path of destruction flooding farms and annihilating much of the produce supplied by upstate farmers to many of New York City’s Greenmarkets.

Gary Glowaczewski, a third-generation farmer from R&G Produce in Orange County who supplies a large amount of his produce to Greenmarkets in Elmhurst and Jackson Heights, was devastated. “A hundred percent of our crops were wiped out,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen in this area or to us.”

Before the tropical storm sent the Wallkill River over its banks, swelling the Pochuk Creek and consuming Glowaczewski’s 12-year-old farm in 5 feet of water, he and his brother did all they could in preparation for the storm and gathered much of their crops while storing their field equipment in warehouses.

After assessing the devastation upstate left in the wake of the storm, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that preliminary estimates left 140,000 acres of the New York’s agricultural sector suffering $45 million in damages.

While the damage was still being assessed, Cuomo feared the number of ruined agricultural acreage was still climbing.

On Saturday, Cuomo announced the creation of a $15 million Agricultural and Community Recovery Fund to help rebuild the hard hit rural industry.

But the newly announced funding may not be enough to salvage over a decade’s worth of work or maintain the livelihood of farmers and their families.

“Besides paying the bills, how do we put food on our own tables?” Glowaczewski asked. “It’s in the millions, the amount of revenue that we lost. I don’t know how we can bounce back.”

Before the storm hit, many of the farms supplying the borough’s Greenmarkets were in the process of harvesting the crops they planted as far back as April.

Although many of the borough’s Greenmarkets were still stocked last weekend, that produce was gathered before the storm hit.

“This was the worst time for a storm to hit,” said Cheryl Huber, assistant director of New York City’s Greenmarkets. “Farmers were either about to or are in the process of harvesting their summer crops.”

Reconfiguring produce after a heavy storm during the harvest is a difficult task for farmers to undertake in mid-season and will make it difficult for hard-hit farmers to become profitable again, Huber said.

In an effort to help aid upstate farmers, GrowNYC, the nonprofit organizer that runs the city’s Greenmarkets, has set up a hurricane relief fund.

Huber remains positive that farmers will weather this particular natural disaster in hopes that they will be able to continue contributing to the city’s popular greenmarkets.

But as many farmers continue to assess the damage, moving forward, Glowaczewski is not sure squeaking by each week with a selection of produce that was salvaged will be enough to carry him into next season.

“We’ve lost all our investment and everything we had,” Glowaczewski said. “I don’t know what we are going to do.”

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Weekly fall farmers mar­kets are open in southwest Birmingham, with Lawson State Community College hosting its first today.

The Lawson State site of the Southwest Fresh Market will open at 10 a.m. at Wil­son Road and Elmyra Street, said Atticus Rominger, a spokesman for Main Street Birmingham. Mayor William Bell will visit at 10:30.
Beginning next week, the market will be held each Thursday through Oct. 13 from 7 a.m.-noon.
A Saturday farmers mar­ket will be held on Sept. 17, Oct. 1 and Oct. 15 from 8 a.m. to noon at the Mary Dorse Center, 3021 46th St. Southwest.

Main Street Birmingham, Project Hopewell and the Mayor's Office of Economic Development are the part­ners on the project. It's part of an initiative called the Ur­ban Food Project, which seeks to bring fresh food to urban "food deserts," areas that lack access to fresh food.

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Ever wondered why you cannot resist eating popcorn at the movies, even if it''s stale? It''s because people do not keep eating junk food just because it is tasty, scientists say.

Instead, people develop a habit once they have associated a place with a certain kind of food, like popcorn at the cinema, the University of Southern California study found.

The researchers devised a test to see what causes us to overeat. They gave people about to enter a cinema a bucket of just-popped fresh popcorn, or stale week-old popcorn.

Moviegoers who did not usually eat popcorn at the movies ate much less stale popcorn than fresh popcorn because it just did not taste good.

But those who said they typically had popcorn at the movies ate about the same amount of popcorn whether it was fresh or stale, the Daily Mail reported.

In other words, for those in the habit of snacking at the movies, it made no difference whether the popcorn tasted good or not, the researchers said.

Co-author Wendy Wood said: "People believe their eating behaviour is largely activated by how food tastes. Nobody likes cold, spongy, week-old popcorn.

"But once we''ve formed an eating habit, we no longer care whether the food tastes good. We''ll eat exactly the same amount, whether it''s fresh or stale."
The findings, published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, have important implications for understanding overeating and the conditions that may cause people to eat even if they are not hungry or don''t like the food, the researchers said.

"When we''ve repeatedly eaten a particular food in a particular environment, our brain comes to associate the food with that environment and makes us keep eating as long as those environmental cues are present," said David Neal, who led the study.

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Being a creature of habit may mean mindlessly eating food, even when it's stale. An online study in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin looking at how certain cues and adjustments can affect our habits used two experiments involving mindless eating. In the first, 98 people were recruited to watch movie trailers and were given water and boxes of popcorn. The popcorn was either 1 week old and stale, or freshly popped. It was randomly doled out to the participants who had also been surveyed about how often they typically eat popcorn in movie theaters.

Those who who were very used to eating popcorn at the movies ate the same percentage of popcorn whether it was fresh or stale, while those who had moderate or weak habits of eating movie popcorn ate considerably less stale popcorn than fresh. Controlling for hunger didn't alter the outcome.

Researchers also tested the habit theory in a different context -- a meeting room. While not in the familiar confines of a movie theater, would people be more aware of the fact that the popcorn was stale?

Here, taste mattered. Everyone ate less stale popcorn compared with fresh regardless of how strong their habit of eating movie popcorn.

In the second experiment, 89 movie-goers were asked to eat popcorn with their dominant or nondominant hand to see if that type of interference would disrupt their habits and alter how much they ate of stale and fresh popcorn. Eating with the nondominant hand caused those with moderate and high popcorn habits to eat less stale than fresh popcorn (those with low popcorn-eating habits ate about the same amount of fresh and stale popcorn, but researchers noted that they ate so slowly it caused a floor effect).

"People believe their eating behavior is largely activated by how food tastes. Nobody likes cold, spongy, week-old popcorn," said study co-author Wendy Wood in a news release. Wood, provost professor of psychology and business at USC, added, "But once we've formed an eating habit, we no longer care whether the food tastes good. We'll eat exactly the same amount, whether it's fresh or stale."

Brian Wansink, director of the Cornell University Food & Brand Lab, believes some easy changes -- switching from larger plates to smaller ones, for example -- could help us eat less without putting too much thought into it.

But in some situations, it may take more drastic measures to make us notice what we're eating. "It's not always feasible for dieters to avoid or alter the environments in which they typically overeat," Wood said. "More feasible, perhaps, is for dieters to actively disrupt the established patterns of how they eat through simple techniques, such as switching the hand they use to eat."

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In the past 30 years, what and how Australians eat has changed dramatically. We consume more meals away from home, particularly at fast food restaurants (usually in large portions), we have more sweetened drinks and eat more energy-dense and nutrient-poor processed foods. It makes absolute sense that these habits lead to an increased risk of health problems in adults and children. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the most common diseases associated with diet are diabetes, stroke, heart disease and cancer. In 2009, 1043 deaths occurred in Australia where obesity was identified as the underlying cause. In the US, an estimated 300,000 deaths occur each year due to obesity. There is evidence of diet also being a factor in depression and hypertension.

A lack of crucial nutrients in our diets can cause serious health problems - as can too many. A good rule to remember is to eat more brightly coloured seasonal fruits and vegetables, especially those grown locally. The flavour and nutritional value is at its best in locally grown produce - and your food is much more fresh. Bright orange, red and green fruit and vegetables contain thousands of phytochemicals that help boost our immune systems. Generally, the richer the colour, the better the flavour and nutritional value. So, just remember: keep it bright, keep it fresh and make it yourself. You are what you eat - and fresh food is the best everyday medicine.

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In March, food giant Del Monte Fresh Produce recalled Guatemalan cantaloupes sold in Oregon after a salmonella outbreak sickened consumers here and in other states. At the time, William Keene, the Oregon Health Authority's senior epidemiologist, said the company's fruit was the culprit.

On Friday, Coral Gables, Fla.-based Del Monte notified the State of Oregon it intends to sue over the recall which it says was based on a "clear error of judgment." The notice follows a related federal lawsuit Del Monte filed against the federal Food and Drug Administration last week in Maryland.

Del Monte says that Keene played a large role in the recall. Del Monte says its cantaloupes were not to blame and that Keene acted hastily and without sufficient evidence in pushing for a recall.

"Dr. Keene and the OHA conducted an apparently cursory investigation of the illnesses and concluded that they were associated with the consumption of cantaloupes by the patients who became ill," reads an Aug. 26 tort claim filed with the Oregon Department of Administrative Services. "Dr. Keene reached this conclusion without ever testing any cantaloupes to determine whether they were contaminated with salmonella."

“Del Monte reluctantly took this action to protect our reputation as a trusted supplier of high quality, safe food products to consumers around the world and open a long needed dialogue among the public, the industry and the government to develop effective and reliable means to protect consumer safety," added Del Monte Vice President Dennis Christou in a statement.

“Despite the lack of evidence for their claims concerning Del Monte Fresh’s imported cantaloupes, the Public Health Division and Dr. Keene pushed the FDA to order a recall. The FDA ultimately found no connection between Del Monte Fresh cantaloupes and any cases resulting from the Salmonella outbreak, including those in Oregon, and the FDA closed the recall on July 29, 2011.”

Oregon Department of Justice spokesman Tony Green, whose agency represents state agencies, says the state will not comment on potential litigation.

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