You would possibly need to commerce your apple a day for one more juicy pink chunk: a tomato. Analysis suggests that the versatile fruit — sure, it is a fruit, and technically a berry — boasts bountiful well being advantages. One medium-sized uncooked tomato packs a couple of gram of fiber into simply 22 energy, in response to knowledge revealed by the U.S. Division of Agriculture (USDA),
and can be a very good supply of potassium, vitamin A, and the antioxidant lycopene. Lycopene is a carotenoid that gives varied research-backed advantages, together with anticancer and anti inflammatory properties.
Tomatoes even have a notably excessive water focus, in response to UCLA Well being, which notes that at 94 p.c, they’re much more hydrating than watermelon.
Tomatoes can be found in varied kinds, together with recent, canned, or in merchandise reminiscent of paste or sauce. This versatility makes them straightforward to include into weekly menus and accessible for many budgets. Tomato paste is definitely extra concentrated for sure vitamins — notably lycopene — than uncooked or canned tomatoes, says Jennifer Christman, RDN, medical vitamin director on the Medifast Metabolic Well being Institute in Baltimore. That’s as a result of tomato paste has a lot much less water than recent tomatoes, lending it the next focus of the antioxidant. Cooking recent tomatoes into, say, a pasta sauce can present an analogous impact by stewing out the water content material.
In concentrated tomato merchandise like tomato paste, the lycopene content material could also be greater ounce for ounce, says Christman, however that doesn’t imply you must steer clear of the recent fruit, as a result of lycopene is “nonetheless plentiful” in that, too. “Should you do select processed tomato merchandise, search for ones with out added sugar, salt, and oil when doable,” Christman recommends.
Listed below are eight key causes so as to add extra tomatoes to your weight-reduction plan.
1. A Tomato-Wealthy Food regimen Lowers the Threat of Sure Cancers
The lycopene in tomatoes (most abundantly current of their pores and skin, Christman says) could have promising anticancer properties. A scientific evaluate and meta-analysis revealed in 2025 discovered an affiliation between dietary lycopene consumption and decrease charges of most cancers and loss of life from most cancers, notably prostate most cancers. This may very well be as a result of the lycopene within the tomatoes inhibits most cancers cell progress and modulates immune operate.
“Lycopene, together with different antioxidants in tomatoes, works synergistically to guard cells from harm brought on by free radicals,” Christman says. Free radicals are compounds which have been related to illness and getting old, so on this approach, tomatoes could play an important function in illness prevention.
Yet another caveat: The important thing to maximizing lycopene’s protecting advantages is to eat tomatoes together with wholesome fat, as carotenoids require fats to be correctly absorbed by the physique, analysis revealed in 2021 in Antioxidants discovered.
“Strive tomatoes with avocados or olive oil, for instance, in a salsa or salad, to reap the complete profit,” Christman says.
