Educational information, not medical advice — ask your doctor or midwife.
Jitomate is the Mexican Spanish name for the common red tomato. The plant is Solanum lycopersicum, a member of the nightshade family. People eat it raw, cooked, dried, juiced or as paste.
In Latin American homes it was treated as both food and folk remedy. Slices were laid on burns, sunburn and insect bites. Cooks also called it a cooling food for hot weather.
Here is the honest verdict. As a food, tomato clearly supplies vitamin C, potassium and lycopene. As a medicine, human evidence is thin and mixed, and long traditional use is not proof that something works or that it is safe.
Most of the interest centres on lycopene, the red pigment in ripe tomatoes.
In test tubes lycopene acts as an antioxidant (it mops up harmful molecules called free radicals). Lab and animal work suggests it may calm inflammation and slow some cancer cells. Whether any of that happens in the human body is not settled.
Two things are better established. Cooking tomatoes with a little oil raises how much lycopene your body takes up; this has been measured in people. Tomatoes are also a good source of potassium, and potassium-rich diets are linked with lower blood pressure.
Small trials of tomato juice or lycopene capsules have shown modest drops in blood pressure and in blood fats. Results differ from study to study. None of this supports treating a disease with tomato.
For the skin uses, the picture is weaker. Tomato pulp is acidic and cool, which may be why it felt soothing on sunburn. There is no good human trial showing it speeds healing.
You will meet jitomate in these forms:
Fresh fruit, raw or cooked. Canned whole, chopped or crushed tomatoes. Tomato paste, passata and sauce.
Tomato juice, often salted. Sun-dried tomatoes, plain or in oil. Lycopene capsules and softgels, sold as supplements.
Tomato extract powders added to drinks or blends.
In folk use, people used raw slices or mashed pulp straight on the skin.
Salt matters more than most people expect. Canned tomatoes and tomato juice can carry a lot of added sodium. Check the label if you are watching your salt.
Tomatoes were grown in Mesoamerica long before Europeans arrived. The Nahuatl word xitomatl became the Spanish jitomate, still the usual word in central Mexico. Spanish accounts from the 1500s describe the fruit in Aztec markets and kitchens.
Folk practice across Mexico and Central America treated tomato as a cooling food. Slices or mashed pulp were laid on sunburn, minor burns, boils and bites. Green tomato poultices were sometimes placed on swellings.
The fruit also spread as a staple food rather than a drug. Its medical reputation stayed in the home, not in the clinic.
These were household customs, recorded by travellers, cooks and folk healers. This page describes them. It does not suggest you copy them.
Call emergency services if you get swelling of the lips, tongue or throat, hives, or trouble breathing after eating tomato. That is an allergic reaction and needs help now.
See a doctor the same day if someone has eaten tomato leaves or many green tomatoes and has vomiting, cramps or diarrhoea.
Book a normal appointment if heartburn keeps coming back, or if a burn or skin sore is not healing. Do not treat these at home with tomato.
In the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom and most of Latin America, tomato is an ordinary food with no restrictions. Lycopene is sold as a food supplement and as a food colour. No authority has approved tomato or lycopene to treat any disease.
Evidence grades and traditional-use labels are explained in our methodology. Nothing here is medical advice.
What it is typically used for, usual dose, cautions, and the study behind it where real trial data exists.
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