“Vegetables (and fruits) are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread, and pumpkin pie.” ― Jim Davis

Fruit versus vegetable

Botanically, a tomato is a fruit, a berry, consisting of the ovary, together with its seeds, of a flowering plant. However, the tomato has a much lower sugar content than other edible fruits, and is therefore not as sweet. Typically served as part of a salad or main course of a meal, rather than at dessert, it is, in the USA, considered a "culinary vegetable". One exception is that tomatoes are treated as a fruit in home canning practices: they are acidic enough to process in a water bath rather than a pressure cooker as vegetables require. Tomatoes are not the only food source with this ambiguity: bell peppers, cucumbers, green beans, eggplants, avocados, and squashes of all kinds (such as zucchini and pumpkins) are all botanically fruits, yet cooked as vegetables.

 

 

Red tomatoes, raw

Nutritional value per 100 g (3.5 oz)

Energy

74 kJ (18 kcal)

 

Carbohydrates 3.9 g

Sugars 2.6 g

Dietary fiber 1.2 g

Fat 0.2 g

Protein 0.9 g

 

Vitamins

 

Vitamin A equiv. (5%) 42 μg

beta-carotene (4%) 449 μg

lutein zeaxanthin 123 μg

Thiamine (B1) (3%) 0.037 mg

Niacin (B3) (4%) 0.594 mg

Vitamin B6 (6%) 0.08 mg

Vitamin C (17%) 14 mg

Vitamin E (4%) 0.54 mg

Vitamin K (8%) 7.9 μg

 

Minerals

 

Magnesium (3%) 11 mg

Manganese (5%) 0.114 mg

Phosphorus (3%) 24 mg

Potassium (5%) 237 mg

 

Other constituents

Water94.5 g

Lycopene 2573 µg

 

 

 

Done