Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Things I wonder about--the tomato

Every morning I drink 6 oz. of tomato juice with a Tbsp. of vinegar. Very tastey. It's much lower in calories than orange juice and has 90% of the daily requirement for Vit. C, plus a bunch of other good stuff you won't even notice. Cold tomato juice gives me a stomach ache so I buy the little unbrand 6 packs and don't refrigerate them. What puzzles me is why a 1/2 cup of spaghetti sauce or a 1/2 cup of stewed tomatoes is so much lower in percentage of vitamin C. I've read labels of tomato products that have virtually zero vit. C listed.

2 comments:

Three Score and Ten or more said...

The difference in the amount of heat used for processing is the thing. High heat destroys or modifies ascorbic acid (C). Preparing tomato juice, they can prepare at lower temps, or add more C, but with Spagetti Sauce etc. they assume you are not buying it for the vitamins.

Norma said...

Thanks. Now I can move on to wondering other things! So if you're cook tomato dishes at high heat your destroying even more of the vitamins?