�Turning up the heat on the red love apple during processing has the potential to give the popular garden staple added disease-fighting mogul, Ohio State University research suggests.
Scientists birth found that lycopene molecules in tomatoes that ar combined with fat and subjected to intense heat during processing are restructured in a way that appears to ease their transport into the blood stream and tissue. The tomato is the primary food source of lycopene, a naturally occurring pigment joined to the prevention of cancer and other inveterate diseases.
In its standard structure in the average red tomato, the lycopene atom is set out in a linear configuration. That structure seems to hinder the molecule's absorption through intestinal walls and into the roue, said Steven Schwartz, an investigator in Ohio State's Comprehensive Cancer Center and a professor of intellectual nourishment science and technology at Ohio State.
Meanwhile, most of the lycopene that is found circulating in human blood is configured in a bent molecular form. This means that either the human body somehow transforms lycopene molecules through reactions that have so far to be identified, or that the bent molecular structures of lycopene are much more than likely to be engrossed into the blood and transported to tissue - a necessary step in preventing disease.
Assuming the latter is genuine, Schwartz and colleagues take in devised a way to process red tomatoes - the form preferred by American consumers - into a sauce that contains bent molecular forms of lycopene. A clinical tryout conducted in collaboration with Steven Clinton, a medical oncologist and physician scientist in Ohio State's Comprehensive Cancer Center, showed that people had more lycopene in their blood after eating the specially processed sauce than they did after eating regular red River tomato sauce.
Schwartz described the research at the American Chemical Society meeting in Philadelphia.
In the food skill world, processing gets a bad tap for its tendency to deplete vegetables of nutrients, change their color and often negatively affect how they taste.
"Instead, here is a sheath where processing is positive in terms of enhancing absorption of lycopene," aforementioned Schwartz.
Lycopene belongs to a family of antioxidants called carotenoids, which give certain fruits and vegetables their distinctive colors. Carotenoids' antioxidant properties are associated with protecting cells and regulating cell ontogeny and death, all of which play a role in multiple disease processes.
In its natural state, lycopene in a red tomato is in what is called an all-trans constellation, characterized by its running form. The molecular structure of lycopene circulating in human rakehell is in what is called a cis-isomer configuration, or a bent form. The chemical properties ar the same - only the form differs.
"What we have ground is we can take the red tomato molecular form of lycopene and by processing it and heating it in combination with added oil, we can change the embodiment of the molecule so it is configured in this knack form," Schwartz said.
Heat is essential to the sue, but so is adding some productive, Schwartz said. In late work, he and colleagues determined that consuming fat and carotenoids simultaneously improved absorption of lycopene and other compounds, but the scientists weren't sure incisively why.
When humans eat fats, or lipids, the body produces midget droplets of fat called lipid micelles during digestion that ar easily taken up through the intestinal wall and absorbed into the bloodstream.
Continuing research has led Schwartz to speculate that lycopene in its linear form tends to stack and become crystalised, which lowers, but does not reject, its absorption potential. But the knack forms of lycopene are able to more easily find their way into the lipid micelles during digestion, and increasing amounts of the antioxidant in that variety are more likely to be transported to the blood along with the fats.
Taking all this into consideration, the researchers processed red tomatoes into deuce kinds of sauce: a sauce rich in cis-lycopene, the bent configuration, and a sauce containing mostly all-trans-lycopene, the linear form. Both sauces were flavored similarly and initially heated using the same methods. Corn oil was added to both sauces as well. But the sauce designed to produce lycopene in the bent molecular forms was subjected to a second base round of heating at 260 degrees Fahrenheit for 40 minutes. The resulting sauce contained nine times more cis-isomers than the regularly processed sauce.
Twelve people participated in a study of the sauces, and all ate both kinds of sauce over the course of the study. After each meal, researchers took samples of participants' blood seven times during the following 9 1/2 hours to measure lycopene levels. The scientists ill-used a special testing method to dissect lycopene levels in the blood associated only with the tomato sauce repast, avoiding whatever other possible sources of those compounds in the bloodstream.
Research participants had a 55 per centum increase in total lycopene absorption after eating the specially processed sauce when compared to their lycopene blood levels after eating the regular sauce. This finding reinforced the anticipation that the bent forms of lycopene are more easily absorbed into human blood, Schwartz said.
Details of this field of study were first gear published in the British Journal of Nutrition in 2007. Additional clinical trials are ongoing.
Schwartz said most currently available commercial products don't check the bent forms of lycopene molecules. But he noted that some home cooking practices might be able to produce the same results as the special processing method he and colleagues designed.
"Some people like to cook tomato sauce for prolonged periods, sometimes reheating it day after mean solar day, because it tastes better on the second and third day. They bring fat by using oil or meat, and that's going to start to induce cis-isomers of lycopene if productive is present and the cooking continues," Schwartz said. "So it's possible people could induct this process and increment lycopene absorption by procedure food preparation procedures, as well."
Much of this research is supported by the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center Competitive Grants Program, the National Center of Research Resources of the National Institutes of Health, the National Cancer Institute, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Initiative for Future Agricultural & Food Systems.
Source: Steven Schwartz
Ohio State University
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