Modified orange tomatoes have more available lycopene

Orange tomatoes pack bigger antioxidant punch Reuters/Yahoo!News 3/7/07 "Food scientists at Ohio State University in Columbus have grown a special variety of orange tomatoes that may be healthier than garden-variety red tomatoes. The orange tomatoes contain a type of lycopene that is more readily used by the body than the type found in red tomatoes...Lycopene -- an antioxidant thought to have a number of health benefits such as reducing the risk of cancer, heart disease and age-related eye problems -- is what gives red tomatoes and other fruits and vegetables their rich color...ycopene absorption from the orange tomato sauce was 2.5 times higher than that absorbed from the red tomato sauce. Blood lycopene levels spiked about 5 hours after the orange tomato sauce meal and at this time the levels were some 200 times higher than those seen after the red tomato sauce meal..."While red tomatoes contain far more lycopene than orange tomatoes, most of it is in a form that the body doesn't absorb well," Schwartz, a professor of food science and technology at Ohio State, ...The orange tomatoes are not readily available at grocery stores; they were grown at an Ohio State-affiliated agricultural research center. Schwartz and colleagues suggest that interested consumers could seek out orange or gold-colored heirloom tomatoes as an alternative -- although they haven't tested how much or what kind of lycopene these varieties contain"

So what is the better form of lycopene?

ScienceDaily covered this story last month. In that coverage they note "Lycopene is a carotenoid that contains a variety of related compounds called isomers. Isomers share the same chemical formula, yet differ in chemical structure. In the case of tomatoes, the different lycopene isomers play a part in determining the color of the fruit...several of these isomers, called cis- lycopenes, in human blood. But most of the tomatoes and tomato-based products we currently consume are rich in all-trans­-lycopene. “We don't know why our bodies seem to transform lycopene into cis-isomers, or if some isomers are more beneficial than others,...researchers don't know if tomatoes rich in cis-lycopene would provide greater health benefits to humans, but the study's results suggest that tomatoes can be used to increase both the intake and absorption of the health-beneficial compounds...“Our study showed that a tomato can also increase beta carotene levels in the blood,” Schwartz said. While these special tomatoes were grown just for this study, the researchers have pre-commercial lines of both varieties available..."

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