View Full Version : a new (to me) vegetable: tomatoes
wetmanNY
07-02-2003, 11:41 AM
Tomato season is on us. You know, when you're slicing tomatoes, how that first slice is mostly tomato skin? Well the barbs will really go for it... well, they'll really go for anything, won't they?
ix-nay on the salt and olive oil...
...or the pesto (Homer Simpson drool noise)
Happy Fourth all!
I don't know if this has any bearing but I know humans don't digest tomato skins.
Because it's all cellulose Scott? Some fish do better with cellulose (like raw plants and algae) than others.
"You say 'vegetable' and I say 'fruit.'
You say "vegetable' and I say 'fruit.'
'vegetable'... 'fruit'... 'vegetable'... 'fruit'...
Let's call the whole thing off!"
:)
Which fish do better? I had always heard you should freeze or blanch the veg to explode the cell wall and make the cellulose easier to digest? Is there another reason?
kveeti
07-02-2003, 9:22 PM
Yes, although the tomato is technically a fruit, it was given the classification of "vegetable" by the government in 1893 for trade purposes.
I can't verify this (the 1893 decree), but it is in my everything-I-never-wanted-to-know-about-food guide that I refer to for work.
Well my guess Scott is that the algae eating fish are best at digesting cellulose. I suppose that blanching vegetables does break down the cellulose walls. I never really considered that as to why blanched veggies are better for fish.
wetmanNY
07-03-2003, 7:25 AM
Blanching makes them sink without those veggie (fruit?) clips. And it knocks back bacteria long enough for the vegefruit to get eaten before it's shrouded in Saprolegnia. (Theyll turn their noses up at it then.)
No vertebrate can digest cellulose (or chitin). Roughage. It's a Good Thing.
BTW, the next day, I'd say tomato is rated a modest success. Not like spinach!
kveeti you're a geek after my own heart.
Correct in that no vertebrate can directly digest cellulose, but quite a number of them can and do harbor cellulose-digesting bacteria and make use of the result.
Ignoring all the ruminants, which don't fit well in tanks, at least some of the Panaques and doubtless others play this game.
wetmanNY
07-03-2003, 10:57 AM
Us too, RTR! Plus all those cows...
Panaque have got the additional-- and rarer-- trick, of getting lignin digested for them. Symbionts again. As termites have, each with its own lignin-digesting community.
Plus... a termite colony functions as a single long digestive tract (lignin isn't an easy diet after all), thanks to some disgusting personal habits of theirs...:rolleyes:
So: is it possible that lories may share some gut bacteria, and that a newly-arrived Panaque will do better-- territorial issues aside-- if it is put into a tank where there are already some fat and flourishing Panaque?
OrionGirl
07-03-2003, 12:09 PM
Isn't that the premise of why ottos are so hit and miss on survival?
wetmanNY
07-03-2003, 12:13 PM
uh-huh... and why they pine away alone?...
Yup, at least part of the issue on newly arrived, starved Loricariids.
Good luck on getting an established and a new Panaque to cohabit for any time - grumpy fish IME. I think naural territory is larger than any tank I own. Maybe in a tank +refugium/sump, a circulating range, or maybe just a divider.
scott
07-03-2003, 10:40 PM
Kveeti what do you do for work to refer to that sort of book?
scott
07-03-2003, 10:46 PM
Hey Kveeti HTH
http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/plantanswers/vegetables/vegdefine.html
scott
07-03-2003, 10:59 PM
Although I can't find it on Oyez (http://www.oyez.org/oyez/portlet/directory/)
kveeti
07-03-2003, 11:06 PM
Thanks for the link, Scott.
I type recipe books for a publisher so you can see the reference guide can come in handy. It's also where I learned that a swede was a rutabaga... when I first started typing to "boil a swede" I just about choked.
edit... ok, I found this.
Botanically speaking, the tomato you eat is a fruit. So is a watermelon, green pepper, eggplant, cucumber, and squash. A "fruit" is any fleshy material covering a seed or seeds.
Horticulturally speaking, the tomato is a vegetable plant. The plant is an annual and nonwoody. Most fruits, from a horticulture perspective, are grown on a woody plant (apples, cherries, raspberries, oranges) with the exception of strawberries.
In 1893, the United States Supreme Court ruled the tomato was a "vegetable" and therefore subject to import taxes. The suit was brought by a consortium of growers who wanted it declared a vegetable to protect U.S. crop development and prices. Fruits, at that time, were not subjected to import taxes and foreign countries could flood the market with lower priced produce. (A hundred years really hasn't changed anything.)
p.s. wetmanNY - thanks for the geek compliment. I try.
scott
07-03-2003, 11:38 PM
Sorry Kveeti (poli sci guy talking) The foot note doesn't make sense. Why would the US regulate against tomatoes? Yeah yeah yeah time to move to GCC.
kveeti - so it seems wetmanNY has it - its a veggiefruit!!
kveeti
07-04-2003, 12:40 PM
Yes, indeed, wetman is right yet again. I guess when it comes to tomatoes a person can call them any &(*# thing they like. I think the sound of vruit is nice.
scott - They wanted to make money off them. I don't think at that time tomatoes were being grown in the US.
Anyhow, as long as it's good for the fishies... (that makes it 'legal' to post more tomato-talk) .
wetmanNY
07-04-2003, 1:30 PM
.. I wouldn't lump it together with a bunch of pomes and cucurbits, that's for sure!
The Tiger Barbs are still working on the slice... without enthusiasm... rather the way I used to eat that one brussels sprout, because I had to eat one of everything that was served...
...it was part of training for Adult life. Who knew that there wasn't going to be any Adult Life, that a President of the United States would publicly refuse to eat broccoli, like a badly-brought-up seven-year-old!
My Tiger Barbs are better bred than that!
I found George I's banning of broccoli from Air Force 1 one of his better moments. And a position with which I was in full ageement. :rolleyes: