The Mighty Tomato | The Perfect Fruit & Vegetable

Tomatoes are a very peculiar food: everybody thinks it's a vegetable, but it's really a fruit, and more precisely a berry! However the US Supreme court declared on May 10, 1893 that the tomato is a vegetable. Either way the tomato tastes great and provides many health benefits, too.

Just eating one tomato a day provides one-third of your daily requirement of vitamin C and one to two grams of fiber. Tomatoes are a great complement to sandwiches, salads, pasta and rice and can provide additional flavor to meat, fish and poultry.

Tomatoes are good sources of vitamin C and potassium. They also pack plenty of the phytochemicals that provide disease prevention benefits. Tomatoes are high in lycopene and phenolic compounds, which aid in heart disease prevention and can help reduce your risk of prostate and digestive tract cancers. Lycopene has received a lot of attention from researchers in recent years. It is a pigment that gives vegetables and fruits, such as tomatoes, pink grapefruit and watermelon, their red color. It also appears to have strong antioxidant capabilities. Several studies suggest that consumption of lycopene-rich foods is associated with a lower risk of prostate cancer and cardiovascular disease.

Lycopene is not produced in the body, so you can only obtain its benefits by eating lycopene-rich foods. Canned tomato products, such as spaghetti sauce, tomato juice, ketchup and pizza sauce are by far the major sources of lycopene in the typical American diet. Other fruits and vegetables such as watermelon and pink grapefruit also provide lycopene, but in smaller amounts. Reference: ADA Public Relations Team