Why are tomatoes good for you?

Why are tomatoes good for you?

Here at SORSO we love tomatoes. We can’t get enough of them. That’s why we put them in everything we do – sauces, soups, gazpachos, and more! 

But why do we love them so much? Well, they taste great, of course. Tomatoes are easy to cook with, or you can eat them as they are. All that’s a given though, right? 

Reading Why are tomatoes good for you? 5 minutes

Here at SORSO we love tomatoes. We can’t get enough of them. That’s why we put them in everything we do – sauces, soups, gazpachos, and more! 

But why do we love them so much? Well, they taste great, of course. Tomatoes are easy to cook with, or you can eat them as they are. All that’s a given though, right? 

Well, they’re also incredibly good for you. In fact, thousands of people Google terms like “what are tomatoes good for?” and *strange grammar incoming* “why is tomatoes good for you?” every single month.

There are so many health benefits to these lovely little fruits – yes, they are a fruit, not a vegetable – that we really should be packing them into every single meal. 

So let’s dive right in and look at why tomato is good for skin, your heart, bones, blood sugar, and much more.

Why are tomatoes good for you?

Before we get into the nitty gritty of how tomatoes are good for you, let’s take a look at what’s actually in a tomato. According to Healthline, the nutritional content of a small (100g) tomato is as follows:

  • Calories: 18
  • Water: 95%
  • Protein: 0.9 grams
  • Carbs: 3.9 grams
  • Sugar: 2.6 grams
  • Fiber: 1.2 grams
  • Fat: 0.2 grams

Low in calories, tomatoes are a good source of fiber: that single small tomato above contains around 5% of your recommended daily intake. 

But a lot of what makes tomatoes so good for you is hidden beneath their skin, and isn’t immediately obvious from nutritional information. In fact, tomatoes are so nutrient-dense that they can be considered a legitimate superfood. 

So, how are tomatoes good for you? It’s because they contain all of this good stuff:

  • Vitamin C – essential for protecting cells and keeping them healthy 
  • Potassium – good for preventing heart disease
  • Folate – essential for normal tissue growth
  • Vitamin K1 – good for bone health
  • Chromium – helps to balance blood sugar, reducing the risk of diabetes
  • Lycopene – a powerful antioxidant

Let’s dig a little deeper into Vitamin C and lycopene, as tomatoes are particularly good sources of these. In fact, one humble tomato provides 28% of your daily recommended intake of Vitamin C. 

No need to chug glass after glass of orange juice if you’re looking to get more of this wonder-vitamin into your system; go for tomatoes instead! Vitamin C is a really important vitamin and helps to heal wounds, as well as keeping your skin, blood vessels, bones and cartilage healthy.

As for lycopene, this plant compound is found in abundance in tomatoes. Some of its significant health benefits include helping with protection from the sun, improving the health of your heart, and reducing your risk of developing certain types of cancer. 

Interestingly, lycopene is actually more prevalent in more concentrated forms of tomatoes, such as sauces, purees, and passatas. If anyone gives you any guff about making and eating too much pizza, there’s your comeback right there!

Returning to that Healthline article linked above, it states that ‘gram for gram, the amount of lycopene in processed tomato products is often much higher than in fresh tomatoes’. And that makes perfect sense, since our sauces are packed with more tomatoes than you would probably ever sit down and eat in a single sitting.

What are tomatoes good for?

From your heart to your skin, there’s not much that a tomato can’t help with, so let’s take a closer look at what tomatoes can do for your health.

Tomatoes have been proven to:

  • Reduce the risk of cancer
  • Improve heart health
  • Help fight off oxidants
  • Improve skin and bone health
  • Reduce the risk of strokes
  • Decrease the risk of blood clotting
  • Help protect the skin against sunburn

Of course, you shouldn’t rely on a single item of food to get all your nutrients – we imagine that having tomatoes for every meal could lead to tomatoverdose! – and your body will absorb the nutrients from tomatoes best when they form part of a balanced diet.

Even so, on the subject of what tomatoes are good for, the answer is…well, a lot! The bottom line is that tomatoes are incredibly good for you, as well as tasting delicious. 

If you want to get deeper into the question of “why are tomatoes good for us?”, there have been many studies over the years looking into the health benefits of tomatoes. But they all say just about the same thing: they’re pretty damn healthy!

Tomatoes are also incredibly versatile – you can have them raw or cooked, in salads, sauces, soups, sandwiches, or simply on toast. You can even drink them in juices, or maybe prepare yourself a nice Bloody Mary…

However you like to eat (or drink!) them, just make sure you have plenty of them. Because, as we’ve discussed above when looking at what tomatoes are good for, they really can work wonders for your health.

Enjoy!