One red tomato a day may cut liver fat, research suggests

Research into the health benefits of tomatoes — from prostate cancer prevention to other conditions — has consistently produced new findings. The latest study suggests that eating tomatoes every day may reduce fat buildup in the liver.

The research, published in the international journal Nutrients in 2026, comes from Italy's National Institute of Gastroenterology. The research team conducted a randomized controlled clinical trial involving 79 patients aged 18 to 65 with metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease, or MASLD. The condition is associated with metabolic disorders including overweight and obesity, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and abnormal cholesterol levels.

Participants were divided into two groups. One group added 200 grams of fresh tomatoes and 50 grams of tomato sauce to their daily diet. The other group ate no tomatoes at all. Outside of this dietary intervention, participants maintained their usual lifestyle.

After six weeks, the tomato-eating group showed a statistically significant greater reduction in liver fat compared with the control group. Notably, this decrease occurred without any change in body weight. Both groups maintained the same weight, total body fat and visceral fat throughout the study. "Tomato consumption may reduce hepatic fat accumulation independently of major changes in body weight and systemic and abdominal fat mass," the research team wrote in the paper.

The benefits seen in this study and others are largely attributed to lycopene, the compound most closely associated with tomatoes. Lycopene is widely reported to have strong antioxidant properties, particularly its ability to neutralize free radicals. According to a paper published in the international journal Antioxidants in 2022, lycopene ranks among the most potent antioxidants of the more than 600 carotenoids found in nature.

In July, a separate study on tomato consumption and cancer prevention drew considerable attention. It found that people who ate more tomatoes had a lower overall risk of developing cancer than those who ate less.

The paper, published in the international journal Frontiers in Nutrition in 2026, was a meta-analysis that pooled and analyzed 121 related studies from around the world. With about 2.7 million participants, it is considered far more reliable than any individual study and is regarded as the largest analysis to date examining the relationship between tomato lycopene intake and cancer incidence.

According to the research, those who consumed the most tomatoes had an 11 percent lower risk of dying from cancer overall compared with those who ate the least. The gap was even wider when measured by blood lycopene levels: those with the highest concentrations faced a 24 percent lower cancer mortality risk than those with the lowest. The reduction was particularly pronounced for lung cancer, where the risk of cancer death was 35 percent lower.

The research team said the benefits peaked at a daily lycopene intake of 5 to 8 milligrams, and that consuming more than 10 milligrams a day did not further reduce cancer risk. That optimal range corresponds to roughly one to two medium-sized tomatoes per day.