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Produce |
Heavens Harvest Farm Newsletter |
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Volume 8 |
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White Corn Pickling Cucumbers Cucumbers Peppers Eggplant Celebrity Red Tomato Tangerine Tomato Cherry Tomatoes Grape Tomatoes Green Boston Lettuce Romaine Lettuce Red & Green Kale Collards Beets Red Cabbage Broccoli Yellow Squash Zucchini Lemon Balm Thyme Oregano Due to the serious lack of sunshine, our
ripe full size Tomato numbers are
still quite small. Due to
availability not all shares will have the exact same contents. |
Hello CSA Members, We are now more than
half way through our 2008 CSA season.
Thank you all for your partnership, as well as for your feed-back. This continues to be a
very trying year due to the extreme amount of torrential rains. Right now we
have a beautiful planting of Italian Red Dandelion that we can’t get to
because that part of the field is sitting in 6-8 inches of water. We are very conscious of
providing a decent variety mix for all of our tastes. Please consider your share and what you
perceived it would be, and then picture it, as it has really been. The essence of CSA membership is shared
bounty and/or loss, organic and sustainable as opposed to many
pesticide/herbicide/fungicide applications with large amounts of chemical
crop residue. Our season is only
successful as we receive communication from our members. From 2 different sources this past week,
both 2 year members, they spoke of being grateful for the variety and quality
of what they received. Because they
have been multiple year members their observations are based on a wider range
of experience. That does not negate
the feed-back from 1st year CSA members or invalidate by any means,
the positive affirmation or criticism sent to us by any member. We also have a beautiful
white corn for this week. Interestingly
enough, corn color has a regional bias that appears to us as quite
comical. Here in From the Farm, Ashley & Ethel Unique Tomatoes Tops In Disease-fighting
Antioxidants
. A new study, suggests
that a special variety of orange-colored tomatoes provide a different form of
lycopene, one that our bodies may more readily use. Researchers found that eating spaghetti covered in sauce made from these
orange tomatoes, called Tangerine tomatoes, caused a noticeable boost in this
form of lycopene in participants' blood. “While red tomatoes contain far more lycopene than orange tomatoes, most
of it is in a form that the body doesn't absorb well,” said Steven Schwartz,
the study's lead author and a professor of food science and technology at “The people in the study actually consumed less lycopene when they ate sauce
made from the orange tomatoes, but they absorbed far more lycopene than they
would have if it had come from red tomatoes,” he said. “That's what is so
dramatic about it.” Lycopene belongs to a family of antioxidants called the carotenoids, which
give certain fruits and vegetables their distinctive colors. Carotenoids are
thought to have a number of health benefits, such as reducing the risk of
developing cancer, cardiovascular disease and macular degeneration. “The tomato is a wonderful biosynthetic factory for carotenoids, and
scientists are working on ways to enhance the fruit's antioxidant content and
composition,” Schwartz continued. The findings appear in a recent issue of the Journal of Agricultural and
Food Chemistry. Lycopene is a carotenoid that contains a variety of related compounds
called isomers. Isomers share the same chemical formula, yet differ in
chemical structure. In the case of tomatoes, the different lycopene isomers
play a part in determining the color of the fruit. Several years ago, Schwartz and his colleagues discovered the abundance of
several of these isomers, called cis- lycopenes, in human blood. But most of
the tomatoes and tomato-based products we currently consume are rich in
all-trans-lycopene. “We don't know why our bodies seem to transform lycopene into cis-isomers,
or if some isomers are more beneficial than others,” Schwartz said. The researchers don't know if tomatoes rich in cis-lycopene would provide
greater health benefits to humans, but the study's results suggest that
tomatoes can be used to increase both the intake and absorption of the
health-beneficial compounds. The researchers made spaghetti sauce from two tomato varieties – tangerine
tomatoes, which get their name from their orange skin and are high in
cis-lycopene, and a tomato variety chosen for its rich beta carotene content. The tomatoes were grown at an Ohio State-affiliated agricultural research
station in northwestern The 12 adults participating in the study ate two spaghetti test meals –
one included sauce made from tangerine tomatoes, while the other featured
sauce made from the tomatoes high in beta carotene. The participants were
asked to avoid tomato and beta carotene-rich foods for 13 days before eating
each test meal. Researchers drew blood right before each participant ate and again every
hour or two up to 10 hours after the meal. They analyzed the blood samples
for lycopene and beta carotene content. Lycopene absorption from the tangerine tomatoes was 2.5 times higher than
that absorbed from the beta carotene-rich tomatoes and, Schwartz said, from
typical red tomato varieties. Cis-lycopene levels spiked around five hours
after eating the tangerine tomato sauce, and at this point during absorption
the levels were some 200 times greater than those of trans-lycopene, which
were nearly non-existent. While cis-lycopene is by far the most abundant
isomer in these tomatoes, they do contain trace amounts of trans-lycopene. The participants' bodies also readily absorbed beta carotene from the beta
carotene-rich tomatoes. “Right now, only carrots and sweet potatoes are a more readily available,
richer source of beta carotene,” Schwartz said. “And this carotenoid is a
major source of vitamin A for a large proportion of the world's population.
Its deficiency is a serious health problem in many developing countries. “Our study showed that a tomato can also increase beta carotene levels in
the blood,” Schwartz said. While these special tomatoes were grown just for
this study, the researchers have pre-commercial lines of both varieties
available. He conducted the study with Funding for this work was provided by the Ohio Agricultural and
Development Research Center in Wooster; the U.S. Department of Agriculture's
IFAFS program; the National Center of Research Resources of the National
Institutes of Health; and the National Cancer Institute. Adapted from materials provided by Ohio State
University.
Original article written by Holly Wagner. Kale…
Health
Benefits Flavor
aside, kale holds its own among fellow members of the Brassica family,
including broccoli, brussel sprouts, and kohlrabi. The low-calorie green
provides an excellent source of both vitamins A (as beta-carotene) and C,
along with a decent amount of fiber. Kale also
delivers vitamin B6, which helps maintain healthy nervous and immune systems,
as well as iron and calcium. In fact, our bodies can better absorb the
calcium in kale than in spinach, as it has less oxalic acid, a substance that
can disrupt the nutrient's absorption. Kale's vitamin K content, essential
for proper blood clotting, far surpasses that of broccoli, spinach, and Swiss
chard. Perhaps
most impressive, this versatile green contains especially high amounts of the
carotenoids lutein and zeaxanthin, two powerful phytochemicals that may help
safeguard the eyes from macular degeneration and cataracts. Like many
Brassicas, kale also delivers a hearty dose of sulforaphanes. These
anticancer, antimicrobial compounds may suppress tumor growth by raising the
body's levels of cancer-fighting enzymes. |