THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, May 9, 1996 TAG: 9605090532
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GUY FRIDDELL
LENGTH: Medium: 53 lines
Imagine my delight - O Frabjous Day! - at the word from scientists that reasonable amounts of mayonnaise - shunned by many as being high in fat - can be an important part of a heart-healthy diet because mayo contains vitamin E.
The scientists - noble fellows, all - were considerate enough to reach their blessed conclusion just as our minds - or tummies - were turning to the season of fresh tomato and mayonnaise sandwiches less than a couple of months away.
There are those among us who subsist on roots and acorns through late fall, winter and early spring the better to eat all the more heartily of tomato sandwiches thereafter.
If you awoke me in the night to ask my favorite sandwich, I'd shout: ``TOMATO! DON'T SHOOT!''
Among many items with which to garnish tomato sandwiches are lettuce, bell peppers, olives, onions, radishes, pickles, and what not.
To mollify nutritionists, I gather some of those accessories, eat them quickly to get them out of the way, and then, getting down to basics, simply clap a couple of slices of tomato between two pieces of bread spread with mayonnaise - a sandwich, unexcelled, fit for a purist.
Oh, you can add a dash of salt and pepper, if you insist, and place nearby a tall glass of cold milk, skim if you like.
A swallow of milk here and there as you go clears the way for yet another of your basic tomato sandwiches.
In all these years of eating tomato sandwiches of just those three ingredients - bread, tomato, mayo - I have never yet arisen from one or more of them without feeling that I could eat another.
A study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that women who eat lots of vitamin E-rich food cut their chance of heart disease by almost two-thirds.
One scientist noted that too much high-fat food of any kind is not a good idea. Mayonnaise consumption four times a week was considered too high.
My advice: Eat mayonnaise on nothing but tomato sandwiches.
An official of the California Dietetic Association notes that artery-clogging mayonnaise does not need to be added to diets inasmuch as vitamin E is found over the food chain in fruits and vegetables.
One school of thought holds that the apple that Eve, dear girl, offered Adam in Eden was a love apple, as the tomato was called in olden days.
``But where is the mayo?'' Adam asked upon being presented a tomato by his tomato. ILLUSTRATION: JANET SHAUGHNESSY/The Virginian-Pilot
by CNB