Red tomatoes

                                                                                      On the Menu

Tomatoes are best eaten fresh. Cut them just before preparing your sandwich. In fact, they should be the last thing to cut. If you have to prepare them beforehand, refrigerate them immediately after cutting but don't freeze them. When ordering a sandwich, look at the tomatoes before you add them your sandwich. If they look too soft or has started shriveling around the where it was cut, give it a pass.

Some people don't put them in sandwiched because they don't like tomatoes. But really, tomatoes are good for you. Three antioxidants are present in tomatoes: beta-carotene, Vitamin E, and Vitamin C. It also has four major carotenoids: alpha- and beta-carotene, lutein and lycopene. A lot of it is in the skin or peel. Tests have shown that the human intestinal cells absorbs more carotenoids with the peel on. When tomato paste was tested with tomato peels, it absorbed more compared to when tomato paste was without peels. So freshly cut tomatoes are better.
Tomatoes also have lycopene. Our body does not produce it naturally. While other fruits and vegetables do contain lycopene, no other fruit or vegetable has a higher concentration of Lycopene than tomatoes. The human body needs Lycopene in order to make use of those powerful anti-oxidants. 
Lycopene has also been proven to lower the risk of cancers such as prostate cancer, rectal cancer, and cancers of the stomach if taken in high levels. It is thought that men who eat two or more servings of tomato or tomato products will reduce prostate cancer risk by an average 35%. So not only eat tomatoes, eat lots of them.
The next time you have fresh, tasty tomatoes in your sandwich, enjoy it knowing your doing yourself a favor.

What you may not know: Tomatoes are a fruit, not vegetable. But is often used as a vegatable or served and cooked as a vegetable.