A Tomato-y Treat That’s Truly Tops
So squeeze more out of it by going organic. Organic ketchup packs three times more lycopene than the regular stuff and almost twice the level of flavonoids. Here’s what all that extra nutrition means for your body.
Love That Lycopene
Lycopene gives fruits (like tomatoes!) and veggies a rich red color, and it may give your body a leg up on loads of diseases — from cancer to clogged arteries.
Tricks of the Trade
Here are a few more tricks for getting more lycopene with less effort.
Absorb 400 times more lycopene from your salsa by adding this:
Topping spinach salad with half a cup of sliced avocado helps you absorb 14 times more beta carotene from the greens. Lycopene and beta carotene are fat-soluble carotenoids — meaning they need to piggyback with fat to be absorbed in your small intestine. Avocado, olive oil, pine nuts . . . any source of healthful fat will do the trick.
Choose this color tomato for more bioavailable lycopene:
Designer T’maters
The tomatoes in the study aren’t commercially available, but many varieties of tangerine tomato have the very bioavailable form of lycopene. They’re just not easy to
find — you can try ordering the seeds online or checking local farmers markets. Orange heirloom tomatoes also may have the more bioavailable lycopene.
3 Ways to Unload More Lycopene
For those of us noshing on red tomatoes, here are three tricks to unleash their lycopene:
1. Slice, dice, or puree them. Processing tomatoes helps unleash the lycopene.
2. Eat them with a bit of fat. Lycopene must latch on to fat (so you might as well make it healthy, like olive oil) to be absorbed by the intestinal wall.
3. Heat ’em up. Heat converts the lycopene in red tomatoes into a form that’s easier for your body to absorb.
There’s a great idea aboutsmall space gardens from the Earthly Garden blog .
Remember, guys, lycopene in tomatoes helps ward off Prostrate cancer.
tomato, lycopene
Leave a Reply