There is currently a craze that claims some foods are superfoods delivering more nutrition per calorie or per gram and maybe even a cure for some diseases. At the heart of most fads is an element of truth. It is no different here. When we look at some so-called superfoods using science, we actually do see that consumption of those foods extend life (decrease all-cause mortality). Some examples are oatmeal, walnuts, and blueberries. In the universe ruled by science, rather than Internet memes, I would simply call those food, not superfood. We eat food to live. Things that cause us to die are not food; they are poison.
Regardless, hearing about superfoods can lead you to do the research to confirm that you have found another non-poisonous food to eat. In prison, that is rare, but very valuable. Blueberries, for example, are not usually available on the meal trays served in most prisons. And they aren’t available in most prisons on commissary. But other berries might be. And it turns out that a lot of different kinds of berries are foods (i.e.: they extend life).
One type of berry caught my attention years ago. Tomatoes are berries. Most important, they are huge berries, very common, inexpensive, and available to most prisoners especially in their cooked and processed state which turns out to be optimum for longevity.
I first noticed tomatoes mentioned in a book called the Blue Zones which reports on a large observational study of several groups of people around the world who live to a hundred years old at an average rate that far exceeds the world average. It was just an observational study, but I noticed tomatoes on the list of foods eaten by every single one of those groups. I found that interesting because tomatoes are “new world” or from the Americas, and three of five of these groups of people were from China, Japan, and Italy. I wondered if they lived as long ago before the tomato was introduced to their part of the world.
Later, I was introduced to the idea that tomatoes are berries. At first, that seems like trivia. It is very similar to people pointing out that tomatoes are fruits. So what? But… what if that isn’t trivia? What if tomatoes are superfood like blueberries because they are berries? That isn’t trivial at all. A pound of blueberries might cost five bucks and have a hundred berries to go through to remove those tiny stems. A single tomato might cost a dollar, weigh a pound, and have only one stem to remove. Plus, you are much more likely to find tomatoes available in prison than blueberries.
I started noticing the same language used for berries other than tomatoes in the nutrition literature referring to tomatoes. Words like polyphenols and antioxidants. Nutrition is a pseudo-science so I don’t bother with it much, but this was some anecdotal evidence that tomatoes and other berries might be very similar in how they affect the human body.
So, I ate tomatoes or tomato sauce when it was served. I vowed one day to look up the science on tomatoes. Experimental studies would eventually be performed, and we could find out if tomatoes are food or poison. The evidence I had was that they were most likely food. If they were poison, they weren’t potent poison because all of the Blue Zones people ate them and that didn’t stop them from living to a hundred years old.
In 2023, I heard a doctor giving a lecture about a dental study. Dental studies are important. Our very first large-scale study on human health came from Weston Price, a dentist. Every veterinarian knows that an examination of the teeth of an animal reveals a lot about its health. I noticed, in my own travels, that many of the healthiest indigenous people had excellent teeth despite not having access to toothpaste or toothbrushes.
The study tried to determine if antioxidants could be used to fight the oral bacteria that cause plaque, calculus, and cavities. They studied vitamin C (a well-known antioxidant) and oranges which have vitamin C (also known as ascorbic acid). The study compared tooth brushing to not brushing, but increasing vitamin C. It was a failure.
But the researchers weren’t through yet. Vitamin C is actually a relatively weak antioxidant in our diet. Lycopene is about 3500 times stronger than ascorbic acid. Lycopene is found in tomatoes. So, it was possible to deliver 3500 oranges worth of antioxidant in one tomato. The experiment was a success. I mean, brush your teeth, but… the reality is that eating one tomato per day is just as effective at preventing plaque and caries – and way more effective at preventing calculus (the hard coating that needs to normally be removed by dental tools when we get our teeth cleaned).
The study even looked at dose related response. The proper dose is one tomato per day. One half tomato per day did not produce statistically significant results. Two tomatoes per day did not increase results by double. So, I started eating 35 calories per day of Keefe Commissary pasta sauce. A tomato is about 25 calories. I still didn’t look up the studies on all-cause mortality. I probably didn’t expect them to exist yet. We have only been scientifically studying foods since about 2009.
About 45 days into my self-experiment, I bit into an apple and felt something crunchy in a very different way than an apple. I figured it was dental cement and that I had probably just begun the process of losing a crown. I could feel the rough area along the edge of a front tooth.
Well, I didn’t lose a crown. But over the next two weeks, I experienced that same crunchiness over and over as the back sides of all of my front teeth released the calculus build-up that can normally only be removed using a dental tool.
All of my life (or at least since having braces a teenager), I have suffered from periodontal disease. No longer. One packet of pasta sauce per day has prevented the return of calculus on my teeth.
So, I looked it up. Tomatoes do have all-cause mortality risk reduction as well. And it is enhanced by using cooked tomato paste as compared to fresh tomatoes. And its effects taper off rapidly after one tomato. In fact, two tomatoes is less effective than one tomato at reducing all-cause mortality risk.
So, there you go. It isn’t an apple a day that keeps the doctor away. It is a tomato a day that improves dental health and makes you die less often. Go figure. And you can get it on commissary.
James D. Brausch is a life coach helping people die less often, become outrageously wealthy, and live fairy-tale marriages. Contact him at httrps://www.jamesdbrausch.com or P.O. Box 1502, Carmichael, CA 95609-1502.