Research from the British Society for Investigative Dermatology has revealed that there may be yet another welcome benefit to eating tomatoes!
It turns out that the lycopene in tomatoes may help protect the skin against the sun’s harmful UV rays. Participants in the study, who were given 5 tablespoons of tomato paste per day in their diet, were found to have 33% more protection against sunburn than the control group, who did not receive the tomatoes.
The tomato-eating group also had higher levels of a molecule called procollagen, which helps keep the skin firm – meaning that tomatoes may also protect against wrinkles!
Tomatoes have long been recognized as a valuable part of the diet and the lycopene they contain is believed to help protect the body against various cancers and also helps lower cholesterol.
Many parents are wary of giving their babies tomatoes because they can be quite acidic. Acidic foods may cause nappy/diaper rash – so you might want to delay the introduction of tomatoes to your baby until towards the end of his first year.
That being said, our babies were enjoying tomato based sauces with chopped pasta from as early as 6 months. We monitored them carefully for any kind of reaction, of course, but they accepted them quite happily! Uncooked tomatoes, however, were never a great favourite – but the good news there is that lycopene is much better absorbed by the body from cooked tomatoes than it is from raw. Although the vitamin C content of tomatoes is somewhat diminished by the cooking process, the enormous benefits of an increased lycopene uptake outweigh the loss of vitamin C.
The fact that tomatoes may protect the skin is another good reason to include them in our children’s diets at an appropriate stage – and their wrinkle-reducing properties is another good reason to include them in ours, too!