Creating more life: more tomatoes! … and the sweetness of vegetables
In “Creating life … my first tomato!” I wrote about my first gardening experiments and how proud I was of my first tomato growing. That’s nothing compared to people who seriously garden, but I have low standards the first time and this is a first time.
It turns out it’s a cherry tomato. Also, I learned that tomato plants usually need insects to pollinate the flowers and cause them to turn into tomatoes. A friend told me she learned that you didn’t need insects, exactly, but their vibrations to cause the pollen to come off the plant. She told me she used an electronic vibrating device I didn’t have but I have an electric hair trimmer that vibrates.
Below are the results: more cherry tomatoes in various stages of growth. Plus the one from before is close to being ready to eat. Meanwhile, when I visited the farm my CSA vegetables come from, I ate dozens of cherry tomatoes from each plant and there were hundreds of plants, so I know this is nothing numerically, but I’m overjoyed at my fruit.
The sweetness of vegetables
Speaking of vegetables, I’ve noticed lately how much sweeter vegetables taste than I ever noticed. In particular, a couple peppers I’ve tasted lately taste sweet like fruit. Actually, sweet like candy. I couldn’t believe how sweet they tasted, like I couldn’t stop eating them, in part because I knew peppers are healthy so there isn’t much reason not to eat them.
Why did they taste so sweet? I could thing of three main possible reasons:
- My CSA’s farmers produce sweeter peppers than I’ve had before, which is possible since other produce of theirs is the best I’ve tasted.
- My taste buds have changed as I’ve aged.
- My new diet’s lack of food with fiber removed or with packaging made my taste buds more sensitive.
I think the last candidate is most likely. I haven’t had candy in months. Fruit is tasting more nuanced and flavorful than ever. The pears I’ve had recently taste better than mangoes or other tropical fruit I’ve had in the tropics.
It’s getting to where I can’t believe people eat chocolate cake and ice cream when they can eat fresh fruit. I mean, I used to eat a lot of sweets, but now that my taste buds have re-acclimated to fresh fruit and vegetables, I feel like everything has more flavor, especially sweetness. Straight sugar seems gross now.
I’m also eating more volume of food than ever, or at least eating to stuffed nearly every meal. Since all my meals have so much fiber, I’m still losing fat off my abdomen and love handles despite eating to full every meal. I’m starting to conclude that our hunger and food satisfaction mechanism works great for whole foods—that is, if we eat what I’m eating, then eating until stuffed gives us about the right amount of food for health. You don’t have to count calories.
It would make sense evolutionarily for our satisfaction mechanism to kick in where mine does, which makes you healthy, and that removing fiber, which increases the calories per nutritional value, would lead you to put on fat.
This mix of food leads to everything tasting delicious and every meal being a banquet.
I can’t believe I didn’t change to this diet earlier.
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