You must often see the round red tomatoes in so many types of meals. They are tasty, sweet and a little acidic. In addition, they are so low in fat and calories but high in fiber. The low calories in tomato make the fruit not only good, but great diet companion. Why are they great? Because these little tomatoes have so many minerals and vitamins contained in their small bodies. One of them is the lycopene. What is lycopene? It is an antioxidant that gives the tomatoes their very popular red color. This antioxidant also has the ability to greatly reduce the risk of cancer.
This cancer risk reduction has been shown from lycopene. Among the cancers that lycopene protect against are the skin, lung, prostate, colon, esophagus and breast. This means that lycopene is highly beneficial for both gender with their own specific type cancers. According to those studies, among the listed cancers, the lycopene plays an important role in helping to prevent the prostate cancer. There are five studies on the field that suggested that the risk of cancer of the prostate can be reduced by 30 to 40 percent when the person concerned is consuming high intakes of tomatoes.
The tomatoes are good when consume raw and uncooked, but they are equally good when consumed cooked because some of the water in the tomatoes will evaporate. Once the water evaporates, the tomato will be more concentrated and a concentrated tomato will be a richer source of vitamins and minerals if compared to fresh tomatoes. In addition, the human bodies are able to absorb more lycopene when they come from processed or cooked tomatoes compared to the fresh ones. The example of processed and cooked tomatoes is ketchup, sauces and puree while the examples of pure tomatoes are usually in the salads and juice.
A tomato is also a rich source of vitamin A and C. On the contrary to the lycopene, the vitamin C can be destroyed when the tomatoes are cooked or processed. Therefore, you will need to consume a balance amount of raw and cooked tomatoes in order to get the best results from the two. As for the vitamin A, the redder the color of the skin is, the more vitamin A it contains. Therefore, although there are types of tomatoes that are green and are great for salad, you will also need to consume the red ones if you want to get its vitamin A.
