preview

Tomatoes And Lycopene

Decent Essays

You may have heard that tomatoes and processed tomato products such as tomato sauce, tomato paste, and canned tomatoes protect against some types of cancer. The cancer-preventing properties of tomato products have been attributed to lycopene. It is a bright red pigment found in tomatoes and other red fruits and is the cause of their red colour. Unlike other fruits and vegetables, where nutritional content such as vitamin C is diminished upon cooking, processing of tomatoes increases the concentration of lycopene. Lycopene concentration in tomato paste is four times more than in fresh tomatoes. This is because lycopene is insoluble in water and is tightly bound to vegetable fiber. Thus, processed tomato products such as pasteurized tomato juice,

Get Access