Eating Tomatoes

Tomatoes are most often grouped in the vegetable category, but in a botanical standpoint they are a fruit. Tomatoes come in many varieties and color all being very good for you. Tomatoes contain vitamins C and E, antioxidants and fiber. They are many ways to add the benefit of this fruit into your diet such as drinking tomato juice at breakfast, adding them into your salads, a bowl of tomato soup for lunch, having tomato on a sandwich, and having a tomato-based sauce at dinner time. Cooking the tomato in olive oil allows for even better absorption of the lycopene in your body.

Tomatoes contain the antioxidant lycopene. The benefits of lycopene include protecting your skin from sun damage and reduce wrinkles, protect against cancer and heart diseases. The vitamin C in tomatoes supports your body in absorbing iron and helps protect cells. The Vitamin E also helps protect cell membranes. A medium size tomato has about only 10 calories and imparts about 50 percent of the vitamin C one needs in a day. Cooked tomatoes are even better. The concentration of lycopene is higher after a tomato has been cooked, making a tomato paste perfect to cook with.

It is the caroteniods that give the tomatoes the red color and has the antioxidant properties. Lycopene in tomato consumption has been connected with lowering rates of prostate cancer and cardiovascular disease. Yellow tomatoes are great as well; they are lower in acidity, and still a good source of vitamin A and Beta Carotene.