Tomatoes, lycopene and cancer prevention

17 years ago

A study just out from Ohio State University suggests that if you're interested in taking lycopene for antioxidant and possible cancer prevention benefits, orange tomatoes are better than red ones. From the Columbus Dispatch article (registration may be required):

Lycopene absorption from the tangerine tomatoes was 2 1 /2 times higher than that absorbed from typical red tomato varieties.

"ThatÂs what is so dramatic," said Steven Schwartz, an Ohio State food chemist and toxicologist who is head of the research project..The new study grew out of a discovery made several years ago by Schwartz and other researchers that our blood contains an abundance of a type of lycopene called cis-lycopene...Cis-lycopenes are found in tangerine tomatoes. Trans-lycopenes are found in red tomatoes...Despite having fewer lycopenes, tangerine tomatoes far outshined the red variety in terms of lycopene absorption...The study was published in the February issue of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry."

Lycopene is under investigation for a possible role in helping to prevent prostate cancer. One new study suggests it is not effective in prostate cancers that are no longer influenced by androgen hormones (as often occurs in late-stage disease), but work is ongoing.

One other interesting thing - the Dispatch article quoted earlier included a table on lycopene content of various vegetable preparations, and a single average serving of tomato sauce contained as much lycopene as a "high potency" expensive supplement capsule. So maybe it'd be a good idea to grow your own tangerine tomatoes and use them to make sauce for cooking.

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Comments (4)

lucy
17 years ago
Well if you really want to get interesting, a new study has come out raving about Vit. A in prevention of gastric cancer, but found no correlation with lycopene there. Of even more interest is the fact a completely unrelated study has said all things being equal, high Vit. A intake seems to predict early death (from any cause)! Are we driving ourselves crazy with all of this :-)?
biophilia
17 years ago
Lucy, maybe the confusion is because what one researcher calls "high" is different from what another calls "high". In the article below, high is only relative to food sources. On the other hand, the level of Vitamin A that was recently in the news as possible health risk is from high dose vitamins, so it's probably out of the ball park compared to the "high" Vit A in food. I wanted to give this as a link, but I couldn't get it right. So here's the whole thing from PubMed. Is it what you were referring to?

Am J Clin Nutr. 2007 Feb;85(2):497-503. Links
Vitamin A, retinol, and carotenoids and the risk of gastric cancer: a prospective cohort study.Larsson SC, Bergkvist L, Naslund I, Rutegard J, Wolk A.
Division of Nutritional Epidemiology, The National Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden. susanna.larsson@ki.se

BACKGROUND: Vitamin A may influence gastric carcinogenesis through its essential role in controlling cell proliferation and differentiation. However, epidemiologic studies of vitamin A, retinol (preformed vitamin A), and provitamin A carotenoids in relation to the risk of gastric cancer have documented inconsistent results. OBJECTIVE: The objective of the study was to examine the associations between intakes of vitamin A, retinol, and specific carotenoids and the risk of gastric cancer in a prospective population-based cohort study of Swedish adults. DESIGN: The study cohort consisted of 82 002 Swedish adults aged 45-83 y who had completed a food-frequency questionnaire in 1997. The participants were followed through June 2005. RESULTS: During a mean 7.2-y follow-up, 139 incident cases of gastric cancer were diagnosed. High intakes of vitamin A and retinol from foods only (dietary intake) and from foods and supplements combined (total intake) and of dietary alpha-carotene and beta-carotene were associated with a lower risk of gastric cancer. The multivariate relative risks for the highest versus lowest quartiles of intake were 0.53 (95% CI: 0.32, 0.89; P for trend = 0.02) for total vitamin A, 0.56 (95% CI: 0.33, 0.95; P for trend = 0.05) for total retinol, 0.50 (95% CI: 0.30, 0.83; P for trend = 0.03) for alpha-carotene, and 0.55 (95% CI: 0.32, 0.94; P for trend = 0.07) for beta-carotene. No significant associations were found for beta-cryptoxanthin, lutein and zeaxanthin, or lycopene intake. CONCLUSION: High intakes of vitamin A, retinol, and provitamin A carotenoids may reduce the risk of gastric cancer.
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aruzinsky: No, ONLY you, and not because it will aid in absorption of nutrients. So first, you insist it must be OILS, not fats. And I point out that oils are a subset of fats and that whether one uses fats classified as oils or fats, they provide the necessary lipids to aid absorption (wrongly assuming that it will be clear to you that we are talking about culinary fats). And then you point out that mineral oil is an OIL, not a fat. And yet I am the one suggesting people should cook with mineral oil? And now you're making jokes about constipation, as though such childish lashing out is actually going to bother me. LOL. OK. Keep going. It gets ever more entertaining to watch you wildly flip-flop like a dying fish to always be right, which ironically proves the opposite more often than not. aruzinsky: We have 5% cis versus 45% cis isomer sausce. Increasing cis- isomers 800% in the sauce only increased blood content by 54%. Considering that you can get that by eating 54% more of 5% cis sauce, the extra heating is not worth the effort. You're assuming the relationships are linear. There is no evidence of that, and things are almost never linear when it comes to biology. aruzinsky: And, I suspect adding 45% more cooking oil to the 5% cis sauce and eating the same amount would also work just as well. "I suspect"? Based on what, besides wishful thinking? aruzinsky: And, this suggests that 0% cis, 100% trans-isomer sauce would be almost as well absorbed as the 5% cis, 95% tans-isomer sauce. "It suggests". "I suspect". Once again, this is based on no evidence. But it's important to point out that the tomatoes processed at lower temps are still cooked for much less time and/or at lower temperatures than home cooking. Once again, you're working on the assumption that eating canned tomatoes straight out of the can is something anyone besides you does on a regular basis. For most of us who can tomatoes, it goes through lengthy cooking, either before or after it goes into the canning jars, and people who use store-bought canned tomatoes most often subject it to further cooking. For people who broil, roast, or grill tomatoes, the tomatoes get exposed to much, much higher heat, and, as the skins are left on usually and are on the outside, the nutrient-rich skins get exposed to much higher heat. aruzinsky: I believe that most of the lycopene is in the skins, but, you will have to check me on this. You're actually correct on this one. In general, skins of vegetables and fruits are where a lot of micronutrients are located. If one is cooking with the explicit purpose of getting at those nutritients, it's best, if one has to make a vegetable recipe in which skins are absent from the final product, to try to leave the skins in as long as possible in the cooking process or save them and extract remaining nutrients in broth/tea/soup/etc. I do it primarily for flavor and because I don't like to waste, but traditional foodways are almost always evolved to extract maximum nutrition from available foods, and stock made from trimmings and peelings have a time-honored place in most cuisines not disrupted by industrial food processing. In the case of tomatoes, a tomato stock made from the seeds and skins is a great ingredient to have on hand in the kitchen, especially when cooking for vegetarians. I try to keep some frozen in cubes, but sometimes, I just like to drink it like consomme.
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lucy
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Yes that's it alright.. I was trying to be 'light' about the whole thing, because every day another study comes out with more (or less) info. on what to do, believe, etc., but in no way did I mean to put down the research or suggest that doing it is not a good idea (spent too many years involved in it myself).
biophilia
17 years ago
Lucy, I know exactly how you feel. I was in research, too, and I know how hard we all tried to do things correctly, and get real answers, even if they were disappointing. No, I didn't think you were putting down the science at all. I just think that everyone, scientists included, should try to avoid using relative words like "high" without quantifying them. For instance, if you read the phrase "high protein" in articles on PubMed you will find a big range in what is called "high" and what is considered moderate because there are still differences in opinion on the ideal amount in the diet.

Tomatoes, lycopene and cancer prevention

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lucy

biophilia

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