The message
from Malcolm contains these words:

the same ones as you're growing now?...seriously, I can't see tomatoes
having any effect upon arthiritis in this way...maybe when you stopped
eating them, you started eating something else which has helped?

There's a brochuree issued by : www.healthychoices.ukhq.co.uk/
Which lists tomatoes as to be avoided. Yet apples (high acid content) and
cider vinegar (!) are recommended.

Why should the advice of a firm trying to flog a vitamin and mineral
tonic(1) necessarily be regarded as good?

One wouldn't expect such a firm to tell porkies.

In foods there are countless different acids, and not all of them will
affect rheumatoid conditions. Rhubarb does, though, and some people find
tomatoes do the same.

/snip/

I think I'll just go down the garden and eat some more of the excellent
tomatoes growing in the polytunnel. Who knows, some of the fulvates in
my soil might have got into them :-)

Doubtless.

--
Rusty
Open the creaking gate to make a horrid.squeak, then lower the foobar.
http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hi-fi/

The message
from "Franz Heymann" contains these words:

My wife is 78 and I am 80. We both eat tomatoes and red peppers
daily
as major components of our diet. Neither of us suffers from any
arthritis.
My neighbour is 78 and his wife is 75. They both love tomatoes
and he
cultivates them intensively in his greenhouse. Neither of them
have
ever complained about arthritis.

But no-one is suggesting that tomatoes cause arthritis, but they *CAN*
aggravate it.

This isn't very good logic as far as I can see. I think it is
unliekly that
Tomatoes have a major part in arthritis but your argument is rather
like.
The famous Great aunt hypothesis and smoking.

I did not attempt any logical deduction in that statement. I made a
very straightforward statement of fact. Yes, it is anecdotal
evidence. Nevertheless, a cluster with 0 out of 4 does have a wee
bit of statistical significane.

"They say Smoking causes cancer but I had a great aunt who smoked 60
a day
and lived to 90"

A single incidence like that has almost zero statistical value.

ABSENCE OF EVIDENCE IS NOT EVIDENCE OF ABSENCE!

That's trivially right. Why did you shout it?

You have too small a sample to be sure of anything.

That is correct. But whoever wishes to, may add it to whatever sized
sample they already possess.

Tomatoes don't affect me, and didn't before I had a knee replacement
(arthritis was present there) and neither did rhubarb. I have a friend
who loves rhubarb, but it really hits his rheumaticky bits, and tomatoes
don't.

OTOH, I used to know someone (since passed to the great polytunnel in
the sky) who ached if he so much as looked at a tomato...

--
Rusty
Open the creaking gate to make a horrid.squeak, then lower the foobar.
http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hi-fi/

Jaques d'Alltrades wrote:
The message
[...]
One wouldn't expect such a firm to tell porkies.
[...]

No? I wouldn't be surprised to catch them telling sosmixies, though.
Or maybe quornies.

Mike.

The message
from "Mike Lyle" contains these words:
Jaques d'Alltrades wrote:
The message
[...]
One wouldn't expect such a firm to tell porkies.
[...]

No? I wouldn't be surprised to catch them telling sosmixies, though.
Or maybe quornies.

Meating me halfway, then?

--
Rusty
Open the creaking gate to make a horrid.squeak, then lower the foobar.
http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hi-fi/