Purple tomato pops up as diet food

Mushrooms are getting healthier, with all that extra vitamin D, and tomatoes are getting healthier too. Well, the purple ones, anyway.

Purple tomatoes, you ask? Yep. Purple they are in Britain, where researchers are engineering the fruit to contain even more nutrients than we find in dark berries. The good news about this: More protection against the ills that ail us, like cancer, heart disease, and some neurological issues.

Here's how it's all going down: Cancer-prone mice (poor mice) eating the purple food are living on average 40 days longer than animals fed a standard diet. This is even more significant than researchers anticipated and is quite encouraging --- I mean, just by changing specific components in a diet, we can improve health in, well, mice -- but hopefully humans too, although human studies are a long way off.

Something you might consider before getting your hopes about these tomatoes: They are genetically engineered, and this may scare you off if you prefer your food in its most natural state. Do you?