By Michelle Fabio

Maybe you’ve tried a certain bottled tomato juice and have been turned off for life—or maybe you just love that pre-prepared goodness.

Either way, you should be drinking tomato juice, which you can easily make at home, and here’s why:

Tomato juice has been the subject of a few recent studies, and all have concluded that drinking this squeezed fruit is beneficial for your health.
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By Amelia Tucker

One of the things that tie backyard gardeners together is the desire to eat the freshest and healthiest produce they can.

If you are buying your tomato from someone else, how do you know if it is organic?

• Buy locally
• Know your tomato’s history
• Check the sticker number

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By Michelle Fabio

The use of fertilizers has always been a controversial subject among gardeners, but now a recently published study in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry suggests that organically grown tomatoes may actually be more nutritious than their conventionally grown counterparts—and the reason may be the lack of nitrogen in the soil.

Over a period of ten years, researchers at the University of California measured the levels of two “flavonoids,” antioxidants linked to reducing high Read the rest of this entry »

By Michelle Fabio

You may have noticed that many ketchup bottles proudly display that they contain lots of lycopene.

But what does that mean?

Lycopene is nature’s most powerful nutritional antioxidant, which means that it reduces the amount of damage done to body cells by oxygen—damage that can eventually lead to cancers, heart disease, and other illnesses.

Lycopene is also what gives tomatoes (and watermelons and strawberries) their rich red color.

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