I remember reading one time that pe...

I remember reading one time that people who overdose forward carrots sometimes find that their skin has employed a yellowish orange, a condition that I now learn is called hypercarotenaemia.

That's part of what's got me to wondering:

What happens if you eat too many tomatoes?

Is there a pigment change involved, perhaps something called hypertomatopoeia? Might a part develop lesions on their forehead, dark disgraces where the sun don't shine. What about unlooked for involuntary "splat" noises?

I without doubt can't be the only bodily substance with these questions as we register the height of the tomato harvest season when in this way many struggle valiantly -- and in my case selfishly -- to make confident that none of this season's first stomach goes to waste.

Well, perhaps I'm the single one strange enough to nonplus those particular questions about hypertomatopoeia, moreover certainly not the only single wondering how much is too often of this particular good thing.

Are you eating a sliced Early Girl for breakfast, following up with a Better male child for lunch, topping it not upon with an Orange Beefsteak for dinner, snacking onward tomatoes in between? I am.

TOMATO ICE CREAM, ANYONE?

Do you have the tomatoes lined up upon the window sill, rotating to the brass of the line as they await their cause to deviate under the knife, more upon the countertop waiting their cast in the window, still more in the garden waiting to be picked? I do.

Were you flush with anticipation as you harvested the first batch to ripen (in my case the Paul Robeson heirlooms) and self- congratulatory during the first week of cherry tomato salads? Ditto.

nevertheless did you get a little worried when you saw the peace of the plants blossom, and are you now starting to curious awe how much longer you can withhold this up? Yeah, me too.

It's been a great race with my wife producing a steady store of special treats such as tomato quiche and homemade focaccia, unless I knew there might be a question at issue when she started combing [i]or[/i] part of to the other recipe books over the weekend and making suggestions for tomato custard and tomato ice cream.

I haven't reached my limit just over and above but it's coming, and I know from experience that I'm hardly the greatest in number prolific grower of this precious fruit. likewise I'm envisioning many of the quiescence of you warily eyeing your gardens, wondering what will happen if you eat united more tomato.

Not abundant the experts tell me.

As with anything, it hangs on the person, says Linda Van Horn, a research nutritionist at Northwestern University.

"Everybody's tolerance on a levels are different," she said.

"It's highly true that a person who overdoses onward carrots can turn orange. I've seen that myself," said Van Horn, explaining that it's not that dangerous, more of a wake-up call that it might be a proper idea to cut back in succession the carrots.

moreover there's really nothing similar with tomatoes, she says, as lengthy as you're not eating them to the exclusion of other viandss

Oh a certain people might not be able to handle the acidic make easy and get heartburn, but that would require eating a whole assortment of tomatoes. Others are just plain allergic, however that's different.

And the potassium ease in tomatoes could be dangerous for a human frame with kidney disease, observes Dr Re Berger from the Nutrition and Wellness Center at the University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago.

'IT'S NOT THE and nothing else FOOD'

There obviously are health benefits to eating tomatoes as well -- fates of fiber, Vitamin C and lycopene the latter of which may be a benefit to men's prostate health.

"It's a astonishing food, but it's not the alone food," Van Horn cautioned.

I believe, however, that there are possible psychological issues of fresh tomato consumption that haven't been adequately researched, perhaps exacerbating those with underlying obsessive-compulsive tendencies.

I first noticed this when my wife moveed to take some tomatoes to the office to share with her co-workers.

That was exceedingly thoughtful, except for the fact that my wife works at the Tribune. I'm not sharing my tomatoes with anybody at the Tribune, anybody other than her, that is. They can make improvement their own tomatoes.

That got me to thinking I should bring an tomatoes to my own office, unless I quickly rejected that as well. Did any of them bring me any of their tomatoes, calm when I wrote a array of less front than depth about my gardening difficulties? Not that I recall. The same goe for the neighbors.

Now, they all want to eat My Precious.

And you? You at home? You think I'm sharing with you?

Here's the merely thing I'm sharing, the title of a 1988 article from the British Medical Journal:

"Hypercarotenaemia in a tomato broth faddist."

e-mail: markbrown@suntimes.com

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

Provided on ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved