Hi I'm Susan Bowerman and today we are talking tomatoes: how to select them and how to store them.

When you go to the grocery store and you look at the tomatoes, there's a wide variety available—heirloom tomatoes, red tomatoes, yellow tomatoes, orange tomatoes and plum tomatoes, which are best for cooking.

When you are looking for tomatoes to choose to take home, the first thing you want to do is look for the color. If you're looking at red ones they should be a deep, rich red. Orange tomatoes should have a nice color to them, and the skin on your tomato should be smooth. There shouldn't be any soft spots, blemishes, or wrinkles. If you're lucky enough to find a tomato that still has the stem attached, that usually means it's pretty fresh.

If there's no stem, then take a look the stem end of your tomato and make sure that right where the stem was, you don't see any bruising you don't see any cracking. When you pick up a tomato it should feel pretty heavy for its size. That means it's going to be firm but have a little bit of juice to it and slightly soft. Just take your thumb and don't, push too hard but just push a little bit into your tomato and it should give just slightly to pressure. If you smell it should smell slightly sweet.

The one mistake people make when they take their tomatoes home is they put them in the refrigerator. That's not the best thing to do. Refrigerated tomatoes lose their flavor and they get very mushy, which is why so many people tell me they don't like to eat fresh raw tomatoes. So always keep them at room temperature. You can just keep them in a bowl on the counter and the best thing about tomatoes is their nutrition. They are full of vitamin C—one tomato gives you all the vitamin C you need for the day.

They also have a good amount of vitamin A and potassium. And they get their red color from lycopene, an antioxidant pigment that gives so much health to the body. Lycopene is loaded with antioxidants. When you get a fresh tomato that's this delicious you don't need to do much to it just slice it up on a plate add a little drizzle of olive oil twist of fresh pepper and some fresh basil and you're good to go.

For more nutrition advice from Herbalife visit [ Ссылка ] or take a look at my YouTube playlist: [ Ссылка ].

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