Seeing red

When it comes to promoting better health and more youthful-looking skin, cooked tomatoes have the advantage over raw varieties.

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Question: Seeing the red pigment from packaged tomato-based sauces stain clothing and plastic, can I trust what they do in my gut?

Answer: Tomatoes are tasty and versatile, whether on toast for breakfast, in a salad for lunch, or in the tomato sauce squirted onto a sausage that, yes, might get onto your T-shirt. But while lycopene, the natural red pigment in tomatoes, has a staining potential, it also plays a beneficial role in improving cardiovascular health and potentially reducing the risk of prostate cancer for men.

Colourful fruits and vegetables contain many different types of health-promoting carotenoids, which explains why health authorities advise us to eat a variety of them. For example, tomatoes are an abundant source of lycopene, and this powerful antioxidant protects our body from free radicals. In excess, free radicals can damage cells and contribute to the progression of chronic diseases.

Lycopene may improve vascular system function, with studies finding it has anti-inflammatory and anti-hypertensive effects and can lower LDL cholesterol levels, among other things. Hence, researchers have concluded lycopene can assist in the prevention of cardiovascular diseases.

Tomatoes and lycopene have also garnered headlines for their potential role in helping to maintain youthful-looking skin. A 2011 study in the British Journal of Dermatology, for example, reported that adults who ate 55g of lycopene-rich tomato paste mixed with olive oil daily for 12 weeks had less short-term and long-term skin damage when exposed to UV radiation. In addition, the participants also had higher levels of procollagen, the precursor to collagen, which gives skin its structure.