Toxic tomatoes?

[FLRedHeart]

I ate 4 1/2 pounds of tomatoes today.
No breakfast or lunch and I was in the garden working, so I polished off a one pounder, and then saw a prize, meaty 22 ouncer looked irresistable, which was like a sunrise colored slurpee.

Then a pint of cherry tomatoes scattered by trashing gusts, didn't know where to put them, down the hatch. Birds sample pecked 5 medium sized half unripe (green) tomatoes ... in the sauce for spaghetti dinner.

If that weren't bad enough, I've averaged over 2 pounds a day for the last 7 days. Has anyone in real life gotten sick from from tomato besides just from too much acid in the tum from being a glutton? I worry about the tolerance for green ones and some of the more exotic varieties which may have some wild character in their skins. Do others eat so much at peak harvest?

[jmsieglaff]

I think I had a very small kidney stone last summer a couple weeks or so after really upping my tomato intake as ripening really came on--probably eating 2-4 pounds a day, lunch, dinner and snacks. After a couple hours I was in enough discomfort to call a nurse's line, which they suggested being evaluated at an urgent care clinic. Shortly after talking with the nurse the discomfort resolved itself. After that I did some reading to figure out what most likely had happened to me. I read tomatoes are a moderate source of oxalic acid, not has high as peppers or spinach, but a decent amount, especially considering I was eating a lot of tomatoes (and peppers on top of that). Not wanting to limit my tomato eating I upped my water consumption every day and that took care of things, didn't have any more issues. So that's one thing to consider when eating a lot of tomatoes every day. I don't know that there are toxic things in tomatoes though.

[Redbaron]

Originally Posted by FLRedHeart

I ate 4 1/2 pounds of tomatoes today.
No breakfast or lunch and I was in the garden working, so I polished off a one pounder, and then saw a prize, meaty 22 ouncer looked irresistable, which was like a sunrise colored slurpee.

Then a pint of cherry tomatoes scattered by trashing gusts, didn't know where to put them, down the hatch. Birds sample pecked 5 medium sized half unripe (green) tomatoes ... in the sauce for spaghetti dinner.

If that weren't bad enough, I've averaged over 2 pounds a day for the last 7 days. Has anyone in real life gotten sick from from tomato besides just from too much acid in the tum from being a glutton? I worry about the tolerance for green ones and some of the more exotic varieties which may have some wild character in their skins. Do others eat so much at peak harvest?

I am a tomato eating fool in season. Breakfast lunch and dinner. Always grazing on cherries between meals too.

Breakfast typically tomato and cottage cheese. Lunch a tomato sandwich of some type like a BLT or better yet just a LT. Dinner could be anything from a fresh made spaghetti sauce to a tomato soup or gazpacho to a roast with tomatoes carrots and potatoes. You name it everything is better with some kind of tomatoes! If I get too lazy to cook or make something I just eat them whole right in the field. Remember that movie Forest Gump and the guy Bubba who listed every way to eat shrimp? That's me with tomatoes!

[FLRedHeart]

jm, thanks for your ideas. I just found a table on Wikipedia with tomatoes, spinach, parsley and other crops. It shows 4 oz of spinach has the same oxalic acid content as 4 1/2 pounds of tomatoes, who knows about the variety and they are probably supermarket cardboard tomatoes. I kept looking and found that other people are worried about oxalic acid in tomatoes. In India, they even developed low oxalic acid GMO research tomatoes using the flavorful small fruited red indet. early 62 DTM heirloom Pusa Ruby. That variety is a 1950s OP based on a cross of Sioux and Meeruti. They think it is more nutritious compared to what they call wild tomato, meaning their OP Pusa Ruby. They think the oxalic acid makes minerals unavailable for human digestion. More to think about .

RedBaron, I'm glad to be a tomato eating fool too, and that Forest Gump shrimp scene is perfect, (Did he included the shrimp with spaghetti and green tomato sauce I made yesterday?). It sounds like you could easily eat more than a couple of pounds in a day, too. The people that took the poll so far say half eat over 4 pounds, I answers 3-4 lbs because that is where I feel ok about it, not the 4 1/2 pounds. Either I misjudged how much everyone is eating, and we are normal, or I didn't make it clear that the poll was daily and they are answering for the whole season because I can't edit the poll to clearly say "daily". You made me think about tomato juice, so I checked the commercial stuff out, according to the USDA online they say 3 1/2 pounds of tomatoes actually are needed to make a quart of tomato juice, so a cup of tomato juice is made from a pound of tomatoes, probably without skin though.

[camochef]

I know after a morning picking, I easily eat 4-5 lbs of tomatoes/day...this is especially true when I'm doing my taste tests and writing reviews. Now I generally peel the skin off them, remove the core, (most of my favorites have very thin skin and virtually no core to speak of). I also use a little salt, zatarains, shallot salt or garlic salt or other flavor enhancers too. But I always start and finish each piece plain.
Someday, I'll have to total a good days consumption.
Enjoy!
Camo

I have IBS so I have to be careful of how much acidic stuff I eat and drink.

[FLRedHeart]

Thanks for commenting Camo and Willie!

Camo, that sounds too good to be true! You mentioned you usually remove the skin,which seems to be the place most of the potentially problem compounds are found in largest amounts. I was always taught not to remove skin of any fruit or vegetable if it were edible since it has the highest nutritional value, and I have a hard time changing family tradition since my Folks are no longer with me. But maybe it is time to be reasonable about it, since the skin really doesn't add much in my tasting experience. If you eat the blue skinned tomatoes you will just throw away the reputedly high antioxidants. But with this kind of consumption, when we compare 4-5 pounds to a USDA 4 ounce serving the whole food pyramid floats away on tomatoes I'm glad to hear you have a good handle on these large amounts. Thanks again for expressing your confidence!


Thanks Willie for adding that comment. From what I can find, IBS is a hard to explain condition. It seems like allergies can bring it on according to some people, but there are other ideas. One allergy mentioned online is a tomato compound called LTP (Lipid Transfer Protein), not for the acid as much as for what seems to be real allergen, and according to the study I just read, more than half of people do have the allergy and about 1/4 have it severely. But the 2013 project didn't mention how that relates to any specific diet. They did fine the allergen is in the peel, pulp and seeds, but commercial processed products had it at a relatiely low level compared to fresh tomatoes. Allergies are tough so it is something to consider. I know someone who had no problem with poison ivy, until one day they cleaned a patch of it out and their system became hypersensitive to it for the rest of their lives. I hope there is no risk with that sort of reaction and maybe that is related to yours. Sorry to hear about it, that is a terrible allergy and it is great that you can still be interested in tomatoes and overcome it. I originally posted wondering about varieties and allergic/toxic differences, as well as unripes, but there just doesn't ssem to be info on tomato crazy people, only potato crazed people. Either no one has studied it, or all these varieties of tomatoes can be eaten in any quantities which reminds me of the movie Holes where someone hid out in what turned out to be an onion field for a season, and survived just on them, including for water.


TV is really the right place to ask. Here's what I found online for other countries' diets. The leading countries for eating tomatoes are Tunisia, Libya, Greece, Italy and the USA. We smoke the average European on fresh tomatoes beyond belief. Most Italian tomato there is processed, and probably skinned also. USA estimates go for annual amount of tomatoes consumed is around 93 pounds per American, which gives about 4 ounces (108g) daily average (and a good part of that is in Pizza!). The most seems to be in North Africa where it might be 200 pounds (90 kg a year or 9 ounces per day in Tunisia). Mexico is among the highest in Latin American and is only 3 ounces. I will eat about 80 pounds in January about 10 times the world highest in Tunisia, mostly raw, and it would be nice to see that enough others are equally crazy and happy and healthy about it
.

[AlittleSalt]

I know I feel better when I have fresh tomatoes to eat. I snack on them like others do with chips and popcorn. I can't pass by a bowl of fresh tomatoes without getting at least one. And yes, about half with just a little salt on them.

[ginger2778]

So far, so good. I am eating probably 4-5 lbs per day, and giving away 10-20 lbs/day. I just cant keep up. It's bliss, but between you and me...I'm a little sick of tomatoes.

[Worth1]

Oxalic acid is broken down when it is cooked.
Oxalic acid stops your body from absorbing calcium.
This calcium settles in your kidneys and forms stones.
The best way to stop these stones from forming is to drink at least 2 liters of water a day and take cranberry pills or some other highly acidic food.
I refrain from saying drink cranberry juice and other juices because they are as bad as drinking a soda as far as sugar goes maybe more
Tea coffee beer and other diuretics do not count as water they only make the symptoms worse.
Water that is high in minerals like calcium should be avoided.
Over use of Tums and other antacids containing calcium should be avoided.
Cut back on salt and processed foods, lower your sugar intake, lose weight and keep your blood pressure under control.
These will all help to keep your kidneys working for a much longer time.

My rule is to drink 4 times as much water as I do coffee and only drink about one gallon of tea every 3 months.
So that would be about 32 ounces of water for every 8 ounce cup of coffee.
I only drink about 16 ounces of coffee a day.
I have had kidney stones and they are horrible.

Worth

[FLRedHeart]

A delicious bowl of freshly picked tomatoes AlittleSalt, with a little salt! Right now I bet that really sounds good. In June, when your biggest tomato crop you've had in your life goes bananas, between Marsha and me, we'll suggest you start trenching for your tomato eating war unless you reach a point where you can't carry the fruits off the battlefield fast enough. Battle preparations include deciding how much daily you can eat, and getting processing infrastructure in place before the invasion. Since I don't can, I am kicking myself for disposing of mostly all my glass bottles. For re-enforcements, decide if you have family, friends and neighbors you want to share your hard work with who will appreciate your bounty, and whether that can pull their own weight (in tomatoes)!

Marsha, I can only imagine what it is like down in subtropical Broward County right now for you. Here for me in Florida's arctic (Jacksonville), two weeks ago it dipped into the 20s again, and stressed all the plants, and now they insist I eat all their tomatoes at once. What nerve of those pushy plants!

Worth, thanks for the additional comments on oxalic acid and stone formation. A friend of mine recently had some issues with stones and I used myself as a guinea pig to help her out so I have some interesting experimental results I can share.

Oxalic acid stops your body from absorbing calcium.
This calcium settles in your kidneys and forms stones.

My understanding, as was previously posted sieglaff, is that tomato is a relatively benign source of oxalic acid but something to watch anyway if you have a history of stones and tomatoes are mostly bags of water anyway, so all things being ok, there is no need to drink more excess water with fresh tomatoes. But if you have a kidney stone condition, then the best treatment you possibly can do is drink lots of water to dilute and flush the oxalic/oxalate out continuously. The kidney stones form from deposition of the calcium with oxalate under alkaline conditions. My friend was suffering from uric acid stones, which also screw up joints, and form under the reverse conditions ... acid conditions, and are unrelated to oxalic acid in the diet. So on either extreme there is risk of deposition which means the solution besides drinking lots of water to somewhat prevent deposition of anything, is to keep your kidney pH neutral:

Neutral kidney pH prevents both uric acid stone deposition and calcium oxalate alkaline stone deposition.
The neutrality or pH of your kidney where this happens can be measured by your urine pH.

Acidic foods do not correlate with acidifying your kidneys.
Cranberries happen to be both acidic and cause mild acidity in the urine/kidney.
Tomatoes are also acidic food, but they create mildly alkaline conditions in the kidney.
If you suffer from less common uric acid kidney stones, you want mild alkaline conditiones there.
If you suffer from more common kidney stones, calcium oxalate crystals, you want mild acid conditions.
So stones should be analyed, but you are always best off drinking water likeWorth.
Food passes through your highly acidic stomach first.
The composition of the food, and not its acidity determines how much it acidifies your kidney.

I was worried about eating lots of tomatoes so I tested my pH through this month again, this time for me and my tomaholism.
The tomatoes (pH raw is more than mildly acidic) made my urine alkaline, mildly, pH 7.3, and the more I ate the more my personal pH stuck to 7.3.
I ate a steak and my urine plummeted to pH 4.5, very acidic and far more than cranberries or lemon juice, but that causes the conditions for uric acid stones (Meat and fish, or beans, yogurt, eggs, grains and pasta will all acidify urine)

[Labradors2]

That's really interesting FLRedheart! The whole acidification of urine subject is interesting and confusing because some foods which we think are acidic e.g. lemons and apple cider vinegar actually turn alkaline in the body! Now you say that tomatoes do the same thing - yeah! We can enjoy our tomatoes with eggs for breakfast and with meat for supper and know that we are eating a healthy diet!

Please go to WallyWorld and buy yourself some mason jars to can all those yummy tomatoes!

Linda

[AlittleSalt]

FLRedHeart, that bowl of fresh tomatoes sounds REAL good right now. In front of me sets a Roma tomato bought from the supermarket. It has sat there for days. If I had grown it - it wouldn't have ever sat there on the bar. And to make things worse, today it's 70+F with a playful light breeze - THE perfect day - and all my tomato plants are hiding under florescent lights.

I already know all my friends and family are going to eventually avoid me. They'll all know I have yet another box of tomatoes with their name on it. A very nice problem to have

Canning Jars at Walmart. The Mainstays brand of jars are a little thinner. We don't like them as much as the old favorite brands.

[FLRedHeart]

We can enjoy our tomatoes with eggs for breakfast and with meat for supper and know that we are eating a healthy diet!

Linda, The Surgeon General requires this disclaimer:We are not allowed to tell our physicians about opinions we get from the Internet, especially for treating a health condition when all bets are off and a specific regimen is in order which may even have side effects that aren't all great. But for basic preventative eating if you're healthy rather than patching us up when we are not healthy, the same docs usually aren't as concerned.... For that, I think you nailed the great tomato balancing diet, except you forgot the pasta with multicolor tomato marinara sauce for lunch! No problem, today I didn't

AlittleSalt, OK, I'll go get those jars since you and Linda suggested it. I was too dumb and cheap to do it before and ended up shoving tomato sauce into Tropicana 59 ounce plastic container necks and got half of it on the counter!

I'm back to eating 2 1/2 pounds of tomatoes a day which seems no problem, all things considered and looking at what others are eating. They still are mostly great and there's another sauce backlog inside and outside. But, I also admit, a first I thought I was imagining it, but now it has happened several times ... that I have a bitter aftertaste I want to say is only because of Indigo crossed tomatoes, and specifically chewing on their skin. That taste is what made me wonder about the effects of eating them in the same volumes I eat other tomatoes, which I'm still hoping to learn more about.

At this point most of the people growing Indigo tomatoes probably eat up to 10 times the average eaten by US tomato consumer, so it seems to be a valid question in my opinion, whether varieties with interesting wild-related skins may have effects that we underestimate. I think they well could be nutritious if eaten in typical quantities as is the claim, but I am looking at 5 pounds of them right now that I have to eat and even though I liked a couple of them, I find them unappetizing now and am avoiding them. The plants were among my lower yielding plants, so it isn't that bad, but I don't plan on be growing them in Spring even though I think they add nice color to the mix.

[Worth1]

Originally Posted by AlittleSalt

FLRedHeart, that bowl of fresh tomatoes sounds REAL good right now. In front of me sets a Roma tomato bought from the supermarket. It has sat there for days. If I had grown it - it wouldn't have ever sat there on the bar. And to make things worse, today it's 70+F with a playful light breeze - THE perfect day - and all my tomato plants are hiding under florescent lights.

I already know all my friends and family are going to eventually avoid me. They'll all know I have yet another box of tomatoes with their name on it. A very nice problem to have

Canning Jars at Walmart. The Mainstays brand of jars are a little thinner. We don't like them as much as the old favorite brands.

And I have heard of them breaking more.
It is always best to invest in the good stuff.

Worth