Orange tangerine tomatoes better source of lycopene, study finds: NewsTarget.com

New research suggests that the human body absorbs lycopene better from orange-colored tomatoes than from the more popular red varieties.

Lycopene is an antioxidant commonly found in tomatoes and other red- or pink-colored foods, including watermelon, papaya, rosehips, and pink grapefruit or guava. Evidence suggests that lycopene reduces the risk of cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease, and possibly even male infertility.

Researchers from Ohio State University prepared a sauce from tangerine tomatoes and measured how much lycopene was absorbed over the next 10 hours by those who ate it. Their findings were published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Science.

They noted that lycopene occurs in two distinct geometric forms — tetra-cis and all-trans. Approximately 95 percent of the lycopene in red tomatoes is of the all-trans variety, whereas tangerine tomatoes contain almost entirely the tetra-cis form. The researchers found that the tetra-cis variety was absorbed 2.5 times more efficiently than the all-trans form.

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Orange colored tomatoes better source of lycopene, study finds

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