Lycopene | Find Me A Cure

Eat Fat With Tomatoes to Absorb All the Nutrients

Tomatoes are a good source of the antioxidants lycopene and beta-carotene. But if you eat a tomato without adding a little fat, your body is unlikely to absorb all these nutrients.
tomato with corn
Scientists recruited graduate students to eat bowls of salad greens with tomatoes and various types of salad dressings. The researchers put IV lines into the participants’ veins and drew blood samples before and after they’d eaten the salads in order to get precise measurements of the absorption of nutrients.

When researchers went back and analyzed the blood samples, they realized that people who had eaten fat-free or low-fat dressings didn’t absorb the beneficial carotenoids from the salad. Only when they had eaten the oil-based dressing did they get the nutrients.

Sources: NPR July 27, 2009

Raw Tomatoes May not be That Healthy

Tomatoes eaten raw might not be so healthy, says a new study, because our digestive tract can only process a tiny amount of lycopene, an antioxidant found abundantly in tomatoes.

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Antioxidants are dietary substances found in beta carotene, vitamins C and E and selenium. They prevent damage to the cells in our body or reverse damage after it has been done.

The study found that although around 75 percent of the total antioxidants were released, this included only four percent of the lycopene found in the raw tomato.

“Tomatoes are the richest source of lycopene in the human diet, as well as containing other antioxidants essential for health,” said nutritional biochemist Carolyn Lister of Plant & Food Research (PFR).

“However, the human digestive tract is not able to release the majority of lycopene from raw tomatoes, so only a small amount would be made available for the body to use.”

“Processing tomatoes has been shown to make lycopene more bioavailable, so as well as eating raw tomatoes for their nutritional value, we should eat tomato sauces to get the goodness of the lycopene,” said Lister.

Sources:The study was published in the International Journal of Food Sciences and Nutrition.