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This tomato sauce is a superfood
If you make tomato sauce with onion, garlic and shiitake, your body will absorb the lycopene in the tomatoes better. Japanese researchers wrote this in Scientific Reports in 2019.
Study
Masaki Honda, a researcher from Meijo University, heated a portion of tomatoes several times for an hour at 80 degrees Celsius. Each time he mixed a different ingredient of tomato sauce with the tomatoes. Sometimes these were fresh herbs and vegetables, other times they were dried herbs and vegetables in powder form and yet other times they were edible mushrooms.
Honda then used HPLC to determine how much lycopene had changed into Z-lycopene in each portion of tomato sauce.
Z-isomerisatie
Fresh tomatoes mainly contain (all-E)-lycopene. The first structural formula in the figure is for (all-E)-lycopene. All C atoms in the molecule of (all-E)-lycopene are in the E configuration. This form of lycopene is not easily absorbed. When heated, the C atoms can adopt a Z configuration. The second structural formula in the figure below is for an arbitrary Z-isomer of lycopene.
Z-isomers of lycopene are more easily absorbed than (all-E)-lycopene.
Results
Honda found that heating the tomatoes with fresh onions, garlic and wasabi, garlic and onion powder and fresh shiitakes increased the concentration of Z-lycopene in the tomato sauce.
Click on the figure below for a larger version.
Source:
Sci Rep. 2019 May 28;9(1):7979.
More:
Tomato powder protects athletes better during intensive exercise than lycopene 04.09.2021
Lycopene lowers blood pressure 06.08.2018
Lycopene and beta-carotene protect against heart attackse 16.10.2015
Archives:
Lycopene & Other Carotenoids
Tomato
Onion
Garlic
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