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My husband swears by them. At least since he heard they're good for his prostate.  I've never much liked them, even though I grew up in an Italian family and they were on the table just about every night. We're talking, of course, about tomatoes. A new study has found that the tomato, often  referred to as a "functional food," prevents chronic disease and delivers other health benefits, due to beneficial phytochemicals such as lycopene, according to Medical News Daily. The site notes that, only 200 years ago it was thought to be poisonous in the U.S., probably because the plant belongs to the nightshade family, of which some species are truly poisonous. "One medium tomato (approximately 123 grams) provides 22 calories, 0 grams of fat, 5 grams of  carbohydrate   (including 1 gram of fiber and 3 grams of sugar) and 1 gram of protein," the Web site reports.  Tomatoes are a rich source of vitamins A and C and folic acid and contain a wide array of b...

So now I've heard everything.  Stay lean and fit to avoid breast cancer.  Take statins if your cholesterol is high.  Now, eat plenty of tomatoes if you want to stave it off. A new study has found that a  tomato-rich diet may help protect at-risk postmenopausal women from breast cancer,  according to newswise.com.  And I thought tomatoes were only good for the prostate! "Breast cancer risk rises in postmenopausal women as their body mass index climbs," the Web site notes. "The study found eating a diet high in tomatoes had a positive effect on the level of hormones that play a role in regulating fat and sugar metabolism." “Eating fruits and vegetables, which are rich in essential nutrients, vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals such as lycopene, conveys significant benefits," newswise quotes  the study’s first author, Adana Llanos, PhD, MPH, who is an assistant professor of epidemiology at Rutgers University, who completed the research while she...

We all know that eating fruits and vegetables is good for us.  But did you know they may help us live longer, too? I don't mean just resisting diabetes and cancer and heart disease -- illnesses related to obesity that can come when you don't eat a lot of fruits and vegetables. Valerie DeBenedette at Reuters reports that people who ate less than five servings of fruits and vegetables a day died earlier than those who did, and people who said they never ate fruit and vegetables "died an average of three years sooner than those who ate plenty of apples, carrots and tomatoes," researchers found in a study in Sweden. And if you eat more than five servings a day?  Sorry.  You don't get any bonus years!   Researchers studied 71,000 Swedes ages 43 to 85 for 13 years.  Nearly 11,500 of those enrolled died by 2010.  So did they all not eat their fruits and vegetables? The study found that people "who had reported eating no fruit or vegetables at the star...