Dynamic Changes in
Health-Promoting Properties and Eating Quality During Off-Vine Ripening of
Tomatoes
Publisher: Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety
Tomato (Solanum lycopersicon L.) fruit is rich in various
nutrients, vitamins and health-promoting molecules. Fresh tomatoes are an
important part of the Mediterranean gastronomy, and their consumption is
thought to contribute substantially to the reduced incidence of some chronic
diseases in the Mediterranean populations in comparison with those of other
world areas.
Unfortunately, tomato fruit is highly perishable,
resulting in important economic losses and posing a challenge to storage,
logistic and supply management. This review summarizes the current knowledge on
some important health-promoting and eating quality traits of tomato fruits
after harvest and highlights the existence of substantial cultivar-to-cultivar
variation in the postharvest evolution of the considered traits according to
maturity stage at harvest and in response to postharvest manipulations. It also
suggests the need for adapting postharvest procedures to the characteristics of
each particular genotype to preserve the optimal quality of the fresh product.
Author's Conclusions
The authors concluded that some of the health benefits and
eating qualities provided by tomatoes increase when ripened off the vine and
some decrease. It is not all bad as we are led to believe sometimes. The
authors remind us that the health benefits depend upon varieties of tomato that
have high health benefits in its genetics. Some tomatoes are healthier for us
than others and that is not necessarily dictated by when it’s picked Vine Ripened Tomatoes Not Necessarily Healthierand storage
conditions. If you want a good tomato for health benefits, choose a variety
that has high health benefits to begin with. During off-vine ripening of
tomato, most health attributes increase as well as eating quality. Tomato fruit
is subjected to complex changes during ripening and postharvest affecting
bioactive molecules and health-promoting properties, physical and eating
quality-related attributes. Storage effects on tomato quality will also depend
mostly on the applied treatment and temperature. Generally high quality is
obtained under low storage temperature and mild storage treatment. All the
above -reported changes are aiming to accumulate health-promoting compounds
during ripening and to preserve as long as possible the shelf-life of the fruit
during postharvest storage of tomato fruits under various conditions.
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I am glad to see this article published and made available to home gardeners and the general public. Sometimes, information that is disseminated to the public is so overly simplified that it is in danger of no longer being true. This is especially the case when the information is about living organisms, such as the tomatoes in question, which are very complex things. It's better to 'error' on the side of giving 'too much' information, or what might seem like more detail than the average non-scientific person can handle than to 'dumb it down' so much that important details, such as the facts that while some nutrients decrease when ripened off the vine, others actually increase, and perhaps even more importantly, that some tomato varieties are more healthy to begin with than others, are left out of the articles. Thank you for clearing a very common misconception up. A good follow-up article would be a list of some of the more healthy varieties that are readily available in your typical grocery store and pictures of what they look like since most stores do not label the vegetables with what variety they are. Speaking of which, it would be good to somehow encourage food processors and packers to label vegetables and fruits with their variety so that customers could make more informed choices.
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