Tomato – Fruit or Vegetable? Maybe it is both!
Tomato – Fruit or Vegetable? Both?
Tomato – Fruit or Vegetable?
They say it is important to eat your fruits and vegetables. Shoot, I say that all the time! Maybe it is time to respect the lovely tomato. So, is it a fruit or a vegetable or both? Are they delicious? There are so many different kinds of tomatoes and I love them! Sliced for a caprese salad ( one of my favorites) with fresh mozzarella, and freshly made dressing with fresh basil – yum! Perhaps overuse of the word ‘fresh’ here but this is important for the best taste.
And with summer almost in full swing, local tomatoes should start rolling in from the fields and our home gardens more delicious than ever! Let’s have some!
So which is true? Is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable? And, perhaps more importantly, does this have anything to do with dentistry? Probably not, but I love tomatoes in all their forms and since our office is concerned about your overall health as well as your dental health this fruit (or is it a vegetable?) is a very good addition to most diets! Just brush your teeth and maybe even floss before your dental appointments no matter what you eat.
- Does it stain your teeth? No, not in any permanent way.
- Can they irritate your stomach? Well, most tomatoes are acidic – some more than others – so this can be true. Two good rules of thumb to apply here are ‘naught in excess’ and ‘know your stomach’!
- Are they nutritious? Yes!
- Is it fun to try different colors and sizes of tomatoes? Yes!
- Are they hard to grow? You will get different answers on this one! I sometimes have incredible luck and sometimes the plants look healthy but the fruit is scarce. I never seem to have the success we see every year when we go to the fields for several bushels of ‘pick your own’ tomatoes for our somewhat famous ‘Salsa Weekend’. But I don’t really want to have that many on hand all the time.
We will try to be a bit more ‘Dental’ with our next blog. Until then, from our office to you, may many happy and delicious tomatoes arrive on your table.