Tomato: the everyday vegetable that pulls its weight

Tomato is in almost every Indian kitchen, almost every day. That makes it one of the few foods where a small nutritional advantage compounds into something meaningful over a year.

What it brings

Tomatoes carry vitamin C, potassium, folate and lycopene - the pigment that makes them red. Lycopene is the reason tomatoes get studied so often, and it is unusual in one respect: cooking increases how much of it you can absorb, rather than destroying it. Tomato in hot oil, as most Indian cooking already does it, is close to the ideal preparation.

Raw and cooked both count

Raw tomato in a salad brings more vitamin C, which heat degrades. Cooked tomato brings more available lycopene. There is no need to choose - eat both, in the way you already do.

Tomato juice

A glass of tomato juice is a light, filling, low-sugar drink, and it sits well in the evening when fruit juice would be too sweet. Make it at home if you can; shop-bought tomato juice is often heavily salted, which undoes a good part of the point.