Tomato

Tomato is the edible, often red fruit of the plant Solanum lycopersicum, commonly known as a tomato plant..

Uses

Tomato is consumed in diverse ways, including raw, as an ingredient in many dishes, sauces, salads, and drinks. While it is botanically a fruit, it is considered a vegetable for culinary purposes, which has caused some confusion. The fruit is rich in lycopene, which may have beneficial health effects.

Nutrition

Tomatoes are now eaten freely throughout the world. They contain the carotene lycopene, one of the most powerful natural antioxidants. In some studies, lycopene, especially in cooked tomatoes, has been found to help prevent prostate cancer, but other research contradicts this claim. Lycopene has also been shown to improve the skin's ability to protect against harmful UV rays. A study done by researchers at Manchester and Newcastle universities revealed that tomato can protect against sunburn and help keeping the skin looking youthful. Natural genetic variation in tomatoes and their wild relatives has given a genetic plethora of genes that produce lycopene, carotene, anthocyanin, and other antioxidants. Tomato varieties are available with double the normal vitamin C, 40 times normal vitamin A, high levels of anthocyanin, and two to four times the normal amount of lycopene. 

Tomatoes Help Maintain Healthy Bones: Tomatoes contribute to bone health and help keep your blood vessels flexible with nearly 18 percent of your daily requirement of vitamin K in each cupful. Vitamin K deficiency, although not very common, may be a side effect of long-term use of antibiotics and can be characterized by skin bruising. Vitamin K is stored in the fatty tissue in your body and helps to anchor the calcium in your bones. It's also a clotting agent.

Tomatoes Help Lower Blood Pressure: A good source of potassium citrate, tomatoes can help to lower your blood pressure while they're protecting your bones. With 11.4 percent of your daily requirement of potassium in a single cup, eating more tomatoes is one easy way to help fight high blood pressure with diet rather than relying on supplements or prescription medications.

Tomatoes Help Lower Cholesterol: In the fight against high cholesterol, tomatoes provide a double whammy. Some of the phytocompounds, like lycopene, in tomatoes help to lower bad LDL cholesterol and also increase good HDL cholesterol in the body, although the mechanism that makes this happen isn't completely understood.

Tomatoes Help Keep Your Eyes Bright: Diseases of the eye, like cataracts and macular degeneration, have a close association with diet, and tomatoes are high in compounds, vitamins and minerals that contribute to good eye health.

With high levels of vitamins E, A and C, as well as copper, tomatoes are a pretty good menu choice if you want to keep your eyes in top condition, but they also have a few secret ingredients that make them a super food for your eyes.

Tomatoes contain the phytochemical antioxidants zeaxanthin, lutein and lycopene, all compounds that protect the eye from light damage. The human body cannot synthesize these compounds, so they have to be introduced by the foods we eat.

Lycopene may aid the body in fighting heart disease and some cancers. Although there's conflicting evidence (in 2005, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration refused to approve the marketing and sale of lycopene as a cancer preventative supplement), there is some defense for the persistent belief that lycopene, or lycopene in conjunction with other phytochemicals in tomatoes, may help in the fight against pancreatic and prostate cancer as well as a number of other ailments.

Read More at Wikipedia.
Recipe using Tomato see Here , Here and Here  and Here.