The Dirt on Heirloom Vegetables...

Some heirlooms your family passes down—say, that hideous lime green vase—just make you scratch your head in wonder if they’re actually worth anything. Heirloom vegetables, however, may look just as odd, but definitely deserve a place in your kitchen.

Heading to the farmers market this weekend you are most likely going to encounter loads of heirloom veggies!  Generally, an heirloom vegetable is a variety that is at least 50 years old and grown from seeds passed down through several generations of growers. Open-pollination (the seeds produce their own offspring plants) is the hallmark of most heirlooms.  In response to burgeoning demand, a greater variety of heirloom tomatoes and other vegetables have been cropping up in suburban backyards, on the menus of restaurants and trendy cafes, and even in the produce section of some forward-thinking supermarkets. Here’s why you should embrace the oddball shapes and colors of sun-kissed heirlooms, which are now starting to come into peak season.

A Taste Adventure - Heirlooms are the true taste of summer. Commercially grown vegetables and fruits are often picked while still in their under-ripe state and then artificially ripened, leaving them with a bland taste. On the flipside, locally grown heirlooms are almost universally harvested when ripe and then sold shortly afterward, giving them the distinct and intoxicating flavors that are always worth the yearlong wait.

Nutrition Bonanza - While research comparing nutrient levels of heirlooms to garden-variety vegetables is sorely lacking, many nutritionists trumpet the nutritional prowess of vegetables that are allowed to ripen fully as Mother Nature intended, as opposed to being picked will still unripe and boxed up for the boat, airplane, or truck. Plus, selecting more old-timers at the market will increase the diversity of your diet, which will expose you to a greater number of disease-fighting compounds. Case in point: A watershed study from Colorado State University found that subjects who ate several different phytonutrients from a wide variety of fruits and vegetables experienced lower levels of DNA oxidation—an indication of the free-radical damage that promotes aging—than those who ate larger amounts of only a handful of plant foods and, therefore, fewer total antioxidants.

Until Monday - Keep thinking veggies and protein!