You may not have heard of the antioxidant, Lycopene, but recently, researchers have started to sit up and take more notice. Antioxidants have newly recognized disease-fighting properties that can provide some protection to cells in your body from being damaged by free radicals. They also help enhance the immune system and fight diseases.
The presence of lycopene makes antioxidant rich fruit and vegetables like tomatoes look red, and it might be useful in fighting prostate cancer and cardiovascular disease. Research has so far demonstrated that eating ten daily servings of food containing lycopene can actually decrease the risk of prostate cancer by over thirty percent. Antioxidants have also been proven to help protect against heart disease and lycopene has also been credited as a possible preventative for osteoporosis and be of some help men suffering from fertility problems.
Lycopene is an antioxidant that is not naturally manufactured in the body. This is the reverse of Glutathione, which is only produced by the body. But, the only way we can build up our lycopene levels is to find foods rich in this antioxidant.
Tomatoes, including sauces, juices and also ketchup are the biggest source of the antioxidant- lycopene. Other red-colored fruits and vegetables like watermelon and papaya also contain lycopene, but they don’t contain as much as tomatoes. Another surprising fact about lycopene is that the body absorbs it more readily when it comes from processed tomato products. No one can yet say why that is true, but cooking tomatoes with just a bit of oil does increase the body’s lycopene absorption rate.
If you’re a man and want to protect yourself against prostate cancer or heart disease, eating tomato products is the best way of increasing your lycopene levels. There are simple ways to do this. For starters, add tomato sauce to pasta. We can all admit that’s a simple enough idea for anyone to follow. And you can have tomato soup with your meal, tomato juice or other tomato based vegetable drinks. You can also eat watermelon or pink grapefruit in the morning, but you’ll need to eat more of these fruits since watermelon and pink grapefruit aren’t as rich in lycopene.
I suppose you could put ketchup on everything you eat, but even with the great benefits from the lycopene, that just feels wrong! However, there’s no getting around that with the benefits credited to Lycopene, it looks like a very good guess that the antioxidant rich red foods will be around for the foreseeable future although you can also look for an antioxidant supplement that includes lycopene if tomatoes are just not an option.
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