Consumption
The tomato is now grown and eaten around the world. It is used in diverse ways, including raw in salads, and processed into ketchup or tomato soup. Unripe green tomatoes can also be breaded and fried, used to make salsa, or pickled. Tomato juice is sold as a drink, and is used in cocktails such as the Bloody Mary.
Tomatoes are acidic, making them especially easy to preserve in home canning whole, in pieces, as tomato sauce or paste. The fruit is also preserved by drying, often in the sun, and sold either in bags or in jars with oil.
Tomatoes are used extensively in Mediterranean cuisine. They are a key ingredient in pizza, and are commonly used in pasta sauces. They are also used in gazpacho (Spanish cuisine) and pa amb tomàquet (Catalan cuisine).
Though it is botanically a berry, a subset of fruit, the tomato is a vegetable for culinary purposes, because of its savory flavor (see below).
| Nutritional value per 100 g (3.5 oz) | |
|---|---|
| Energy | 74 kJ (18 kcal) |
| Carbohydrates | 3.9 g |
| - Sugars | 2.6 g |
| - Dietary fiber | 1.2 g |
| Fat | 0.2 g |
| Protein | 0.9 g |
| Water | 94.5 g |
| Vitamin A equiv. | 42 μg (5%) |
| - lutein and zeaxanthin | 123 μg |
| Vitamin C | 14 mg (17%) |
| Vitamin E | 0.54 mg (4%) |
| Potassium | 237 mg (5%) |
| Percentages are relative to US recommendations for adults. |
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Famous quotes containing the word consumption:
“Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“I should like to suggest that at least on the face of it a stroke by stroke story of a copulation is exactly as absurd as a chew by chew account of the consumption of a chicken’s wing.”
—William Gass (b. 1924)
“To expect to increase prices and then to maintain them at a higher level by means of a plan which must of necessity increase production while decreasing consumption is to fly in the face of an economic law as well established as any law of nature.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)