Foods with lycopene

Tomatoes and tomato products are lycopene's richest common food source, followed by watermelon, pink grapefruit, guava and papaya. Cooking and processing concentrate lycopene per gram, and eating it with a little oil or fat helps your body absorb it — so a spoonful of tomato paste can deliver more usable lycopene than a whole raw tomato.

Lycopene content by food

Figures below are typical values from USDA FoodData Central and published food-composition tables, rounded to make them easy to compare. Actual content varies by variety, ripeness and growing conditions, so treat these as approximate.

Food	Lycopene, per 100 g
Sun-dried tomatoes	~45 mg
Tomato paste	~28 mg
Ketchup	~17 mg
Tomato sauce / canned tomatoes	~10-16 mg
Tomato juice	~9 mg
Guava (pink)	~5 mg
Watermelon	~4-5 mg
Tomato, raw	~3 mg
Papaya	~2 mg
Pink/red grapefruit	~1.5-3 mg

A medium raw tomato weighs about 120 g, so it works out to roughly 3-4 mg of lycopene. A 2-tablespoon (about 33 g) serving of tomato paste works out to roughly 9 mg. Green tomatoes, yellow tomatoes and unripe fruit generally carry little to none — lycopene is the pigment that makes ripe tomatoes and watermelon red, so color is a rough guide.

Why cooked and processed beats raw

A 1997 trial gave healthy adults a single dose of either fresh tomatoes or tomato paste, matched to the same 23 mg of lycopene, each eaten with 15 g of corn oil, and measured how much lycopene actually showed up in their bloodstream afterward. Tomato paste produced 2.5 times higher peak blood lycopene and 3.8 times higher total absorption (area under the curve) than the same amount from fresh tomato, even though the lycopene itself was chemically the same in both. Heat and processing break down the tomato's cell walls and release lycopene from the plant tissue that would otherwise trap it, and cooking also shifts some lycopene from its less-absorbable straight-chain (all-trans) form toward more-absorbable bent (cis) forms.

The oil matters too: lycopene is fat-soluble, so it's absorbed better alongside some dietary fat than eaten completely dry. A tomato sauce cooked with olive oil, or watermelon eaten as part of a meal that includes some fat, will generally deliver more usable lycopene than the same food eaten alone — though no trial we found has isolated exactly how much of a difference that makes on its own, separate from the cooking effect above.

Food vs. a supplement

Food and a supplement aren't delivering quite the same thing. A serving of tomato paste or juice gives you lycopene alongside other tomato carotenoids — phytoene and phytofluene — plus vitamin C, potassium and fiber (in whole tomato products), in whatever ratio that particular food happens to contain. A supplement gives you a defined milligram amount of lycopene, usually either a tomato extract (which typically carries some of those other carotenoids along with it) or a synthetic, lycopene-only version — see how to choose a lycopene supplement for how to tell those apart on a label. Dose-matched human trials of lycopene supplements have generally used 10-25 mg a day; see lycopene dosage for specifics. Neither format has research showing it's clearly better than the other for any specific outcome — they're just different ways of getting the same molecule.

Where to find lycopene-rich foods

Fresh tomatoes, canned tomato products, tomato paste, ketchup and tomato juice are available at almost any general grocery store. Watermelon is seasonal in most climates; pink and red grapefruit are more consistently available in winter months. Guava is less commonly stocked in mainstream grocery stores in the US but is often available at Latin American or Asian grocers, and canned or frozen guava is a shelf-stable alternative when fresh isn't available.

Questions people ask

What food has the most lycopene per serving?

By weight, sun-dried tomatoes and tomato paste are the most concentrated common food sources, at roughly 28-45 mg per 100 g, because drying or reducing the tomato removes water and leaves the lycopene behind in a smaller mass.

Where is lycopene found in food?

It's found almost entirely in tomatoes and tomato products, plus smaller amounts in watermelon, pink and red grapefruit, guava and papaya. It's the pigment responsible for the red color in each of those.

Should I eat lycopene foods with or without other food?

With something that has a little fat in it. Because lycopene is fat-soluble, the bioavailability research above found much higher blood absorption when tomato was eaten alongside oil than the food-composition numbers alone would suggest.

Related reading: what is lycopene, lycopene dosage, and how to choose a lycopene supplement.