Eating Tomatoes Every Day? Here’s What It Could Do For Your Health

Cut the round, soft, pulpy and glossy ball with a knife and you’ll get a cluster of golden seeds inside with a dense, silky liquid exuding with acidic flavours. It’s a plant with edible, fruity berries, synonymous with a broad kaleidoscope of organic colours ranging from red, yellow, orange, green to pink and purple shades, depending on its degree of ripeness and rawness. Tomatoes are like shiny smooth sprouts from the nature’s garden or cultivars from the farmers’ fields.

Nutrition storage

In the nature’s basket of greens, many veggies are packed with nutritious elements and tomatoes unambiguously belong to this bracket. The small ruby-red spheres are a warehouse of nutrients, rich in vitamins C, A, K, potassium and folate (the natural form of Vitamin B9, a water-soluble nutrient essential for making DNA, cell growth and red blood cell creation.)

“Moreover, these vegetables are loaded with carotenoids and flavonoids, which act as powerful antioxidants,” informs Aman Puri, founder of Steadfast Nutrition, a leading sports and wellness nutrition brand.

Health upsides

A tomato offers an array of health benefits. The nutritional value of tomatoes is high with various important nutrients contributing to overall health. Potassium, vitamin K, folate and antioxidants help stabilise blood pressure levels, blood coagulation and bone health. Additionally, antioxidants and vitamin C aid in reducing oxidative stress and boost immunity levels. They also prevent cell damage and help fight cancer cells. Lutein, zeaxanthin and vitamin A support eye health by lowering the risk of cataracts and macular degeneration (a common eye ailment that crumbles the macula, the core of the retina inducing partial vision loss).

Eye guard

Tomatoes aid in eye health too. They keep eyes in good condition.

Tomatoes are one of the richest sources of lycopene, an antioxidant that helps neutralise free radicals and lowers oxidative stress. This, in turn, decreases the risk of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and cataract.

Lutein and zeaxanthin (carotenoid antioxidants — natural yellow-to-red plant pigments — that concentrate in the human eye’s retina and macula to protect vision) in tomatoes help protect the epithelial cells present in the retina from inflammation and damage.

Furthermore, tomatoes contain beta carotene that gets converted to vitamin A and is essential for maintaining proper vision. 

Skincare

Eating tomatoes can nourish the skin from inside out with key nutrients and antioxidants. “Vitamins A, C, E and the antioxidant lycopene in tomatoes help support collagen production and delay the signs of ageing by offsetting free radicals, while high water content leads to optimal skin hydration,” dispenses Puri.

Strong guts

Good news is that among other advantages, tomatoes can drive gut health and ease digestion.

“Tomatoes are mostly water and they fetch a good dose of fibre too. More so, if you eat them with skin and seeds. This combination facilitates digestion and supports regular bowel habits when it’s included in a fibre-rich diet. Also, certain plant compounds found in tomatoes are said to reinforce the gut environment,” explains Lavleen Kaur, chief dietitian and founder of Santushti Holistic Health & Diet Insight Academy.

Versatile quality

Being a key vegetable, tomato has various roles to play in raw as well as cooked forms on the food table as in sauces, soups, salads, condiments, juices, curries, beverages and so on. What do experts have to say about the diversity of this red berry?

Honestly, adaptability is where tomatoes really gleam with pride. “You can eat them raw in a salad or sandwich or cook them down into soups, curries, chutneys, sauces, the list just goes on,” suggests Kaur.

Cooking actually helps here, she feels. “The process breaks down the tomato’s structure and makes the lycopene lighter and more pliable for the body to absorb, especially when there’s a bit of healthy fat in the assortment. So a melange of raw and cooked tomatoes gives you both a nutritional edge with a wider range of ingredients and items, plus a variety in taste and texture,” she elaborates.

Meanwhile, she cautions: “Store-purchased sauces, ketchup and juices need a closer look at the label since they often carry extra dollops of salt or sugar.”

Purée power

According to dietitian Pranjal Kumat, “tomato purée is more than just a cooking base. Its concentration of lycopene combined with flexibility and low calorie content makes it an easy way to add antioxidant-rich vegetables to everyday meals. It is made by grinding and crushing a fruit or a vegetable into a thick, smooth sauce, paste or a liquid suspension generally using a machine.”

Notably, tomato puree contains potassium, important for normal muscle and nerve function. It is minimal in calories, thus making it suitable for lighter meals. Moreover, it helps increase vegetable intake conveniently. Tomato puree also contains water, contributing to hydration, plus it provides some dietary fibre, especially when less strained.

Allergy alert!

On a worrying note, tomatoes can cause allergies. It’s just not something we hear about often. A handful of people react to particular proteins in tomatoes themselves while others get caught up in what’s called pollen-food allergy syndrome. “Basically, it’s a confusion wherein the immune system mistakes tomato proteins for certain pollens it’s already sensitive to, and reacts accordingly,” highlights Kaur.

Tomato Treats

Stuffed Tomatoes With Paneer and Vegetables

Ingredients: Large tomatoes, crumbled paneer, onion, capsicum, corn, coriander, black pepper and herbs.

Method: Scoop out the centre of the tomatoes. Mix the pulp with paneer and vegetables, stuff the tomatoes and bake until tender.

Health Angle: An attractive, portion-controlled dish providing protein, vegetables and antioxidants.

Tomato and Corn Salsa With Multigrain Khakra

Method: Mix diced tomatoes, sweet corn, onion, coriander, lemon juice, black pepper and a little bit of roasted cumin. Serve with baked multigrain khakra (a thin, crisp whole-wheat cracker or a crispy roasted flatbread) instead of fried chips.

Health Angle: A colourful, fibre-rich snack with negligible added fat.

Tomato Carnival

La Tomatina Festival: If you are fond of freaky fantasies and can imagine yourself bathing in the ‘red sea’ of hurled, crushed, pressed and pureed tomatoes, then Spain is your destination to head to.

Net surfing reveals that La Tomatina is acclaimed as the world’s biggest food fight. It occurs on the last Wednesday of August annually (Aug 26, 2026) in the town of Buñol (Spain) in the province of Valencia.

A sea of 20,000 people throngs in droves to participate in the seemingly ‘bloody’ world-famous fest flinging over 100 metric tons of overripe, unfit and rotten tomatoes at one another in an hour’s time. Streaming red syrup oozing from tonnes of tomatoes washes the streets of the historical town. The eight-decade-old fiesta had originally begun as a feud among friends in mid-1940s and remained a popular tourist attraction ever since.

A deeper dive into the festive details divulges that from 2013 onwards, La Tomatina became an entry-ticket event to restrict the visiting crowd from overspilling in addition to Buñol’s own population of roughly 9,000 people.

Published on: Sunday, August 23, 2026, 07:15 AM IST