Lycopene is a carotenoid, which is a class of red, yellow and orange constituents found in certain fruits and vegetables.

Why Eat Lycopene?

Lycopene is an antioxidant that helps to prevent and repair damage to cells. Research from around the world suggests that it may play an important role in preventing common diseases like breast, colon, prostate, lung, and cervical cancers, as well as cardiovascular disease and age-related macular degeneration, the most common form of blindness affecting people in the western world.

• Italians, whose diet is rich in tomato products, have a lowered incidence of digestive tract cancer.                        
• Research in Israel shows that the development of breast, lung and endometrial cancer is slowed by lycopene.                     
• A US research study of 48,000 men estimates that eating tomato products twice a week results in up to a 34% reduction in the risk of prostate cancer. The tomato was the only one of a list of 46 fruits and vegetables that demonstrated this as a measurable effect.

Red tomatoes are especially high in lycopene, which is also found in watermelon, pink grapefruit, guava, and rosehips.

85% of the dietary lycopene in our diet comes from tomatoes and tomato products such as juice, ketchup, paste, sauce, and soup. Unlike some other nutrients in fruits and vegetables, like vitamin C, lycopene is heat-stable and its absorption by the body is enhanced by heat processing. As a matter of fact, lycopene is absorbed 2.5 times better from tomato paste than from fresh tomatoes. 

There are still no authoritative dietary recommendations for lycopene, but in a country where most of us do not eat the recommended 5 daily servings of fruits and vegetables, it should be noted that the tomato is the 2nd favorite vegetable (actually, it’s a fruit), just behind the potato, and that the average american consumes 90 pounds of tomatoes a year, with 73 pounds of that as processed products.