Don’t you know tomato or tomato products may offer health benefits? Tomatoes are a rich source of what we called antioxidant nutrient, lycopene. Lycopene is an anti oxidant that gives tomatoes their lovely rich red color and helps remove free radicals (are unstable oxygen molecules and have been implicated in cancer and other serious diseases) from the body. It’s proven that those with high levels of lycopene appeared to reduce their risk of heart diseases or any serious diseases. So to those tomato lovers, this is good news to you!

 
Eating raw tomatoes or cooked/processed tomatoes…
Tomato sauces or ketchups are very popular, right? And even with many kinds of food such as spaghetti, pizza, some stews, soups and those chilies. Report stated that tomatoes seem to be healthier to consume them cooked or processed rather than eating them in the raw form. Why? Honestly, I don’t know why. (Laughing) But maybe because tomatoes contain a lot of water, which turns (i.e. during the cooking process) into steam/vapor and you don’t eat it as in raw tomatoes. So therefore, cooked tomatoes are more concentrated in the amount of lycopene.
 
So the next time you eat French fries, chips, fried chicken, fried pork or barbecue with ketchup, be glad and think of the health benefits you can get and what it can do for you and for your health!