Photo by clayirving.

Whether you say it with an ah or an ay, we can all agree there’s nothing quite like a ripe heirloom tomato with a little sprinkling of salt. Tomatoes are one of my favorite foods to cook because they’re super versatile. Tomatoes never made it to Italy till the 16th century, they originally came from Mexico and South America. Can you even imagine Italian food without tomatoes?

Tomatoes are very high in vitamin C and A, but their biggest health claim is actually lycopene, a potent antioxidant in the carotenoid family. Other foods high in lycopene are watermelon, pink guava, papaya, and if you live is SE Asia the highest source of lycopene by about 50 fold is gac a wonderful, curious looking treat I just discovered in Bangkok.

Here are some of the benefits of lycopene:

• Cancer protective, particularly prostate and colorectal
• Powerful antioxidant, particularly effective against the oxidative damage from sun exposure (and therefore skin aging)

Lycopene is much higher (up to 5x) in organic varieties and GMO tomatoes can have arctic flounder genes to increase their durability under cold conditions. I love simple choices.

Tomatoes belong to the nightshade plant family along with potatoes, eggplant, chili peppers, bell peppers and the namesake of the family, deadly nightshade or belladonna. This delicious family does have one downside in that they have alkaloids which can be inflammatory. The ones in deadly nightshade will kill you. Very, very quickly. I often suggest to people with inflammatory conditions that they minimize or eliminate these foods for a period of time. This lowers the inflammatory burden on the body and helps get out of the inflammatory cycle.

At first, the Italians were wary to take up the use of tomatoes at first because of its membership in the Solanaceae plant family (nightshade family). But thankfully for all of us, they got past that.

My favorite heirloom tomato: Purple Cherokee. Yours?

Dr. Nishant Rao is a co-founder of WellWire.com. He is a well-traveled naturopathic doctor and new father, practicing an integrative approach to create wellness in and around Los Angeles. Become a patient or discover his practice.