Is cooked really better than raw?

For lycopene, yes. Heat breaks down the cell walls and changes the shape of the molecule into one the gut absorbs more easily. Raw tomato still gives you the vitamin C, which cooking reduces.

Why do tomatoes taste like nothing in winter?

They were picked green and ripened in transit, and refrigeration finishes the job. Cook them instead. In a stew nobody can tell.

For a smooth sauce, yes. For everything else, no. The skin holds much of the lycopene and the flavonoids.

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Chapter 1 of 14

Tomato

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Cooked tomato gives you more lycopene (the red pigment in tomatoes) than raw. Paste gives you the most of all.

Add oil. Lycopene needs fat to cross the gut wall.

Most of the prostate and heart evidence sits on cooked tomato.

Reflux (stomach acid rising into the throat) is the one common complaint, and it comes from the acid rather than the lycopene.

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