Color is often the best way to determine the ripeness and quality of a fruit or vegetable. We don’t want just any spinach or romaine lettuce, we want the greenest of green spinach; we want to see a deep orange between the rind and flesh of a cantaloupe to ensure its ripeness; and we want the deepest of red tomatoes for splendiferous salads and savory sauces.
But could it be that our desire for certain shades of color in fruits and vegetables, particularly tomatoes, need a “shade shift?” If a group of researchers’ findings from the Ohio State University is to be believed, a shade shift may be due.
This shift in shades is due to the fact that lycopene found in orange-colored tomatoes are better absorbed by the body than in red tomatoes.
Most people associate tomatoes with one color and one color only: red. But orange-colored tomatoes are proliferating more and more every year, with heirloom (as opposed to hybrid) varieties like Golden Jubilee, Orange King and Sweet Orange being chief among them.
Researchers from the Buckeye State determined the body’s ability to better absorb lycopene from orange-colored tomatoes after putting on their chef caps and making up some tangerine tomato sauce (tangerine tomatoes are another variety of orange-colored tomato). When they fed volunteers their sauce, they found that their bodies absorbed larger amounts of lycopene than traditional red tomato sauces.
What explains this? Well according to researchers, lycopene found in vegetables comes in one of two forms: tetra-cis or all-trans. The tetra-cis form of lycopene is better absorbed by the body, and it just so happens that orange-colored tomatoes’ lycopene are in this form. In an unrelated study on the high content of tetra-cis lycopene found in orange tomatoes, researchers from the University of California-Davis found 34 milligrams of tetra-cis lycopene in a meal that used tangerine tomatoes. The meal with the red tomatoes contained zero tetra-cis lycopene (approximately 95 percent of the lycopene found in red tomatoes is all-trans).
Lycopene is a naturally occurring compound found in many vegetables and fruits, but tomatoes in particular. What makes lycopene so different from other compounds is that it’s actually produced in greater amounts when broken down through the cooking process. Because lycopene is virtually inseparable from fiber molecules that aren’t digested by the body, the only way to detach lycopene from fiber to make it digestible is to essentially kill the fiber off through the cooking process. In most instances, food is better eaten raw than cooked, but getting the highest possible doses of lycopene is best accomplished through the cooking process. Lycopene’s heart health benefits are well-documented, such as its role in preventing atherosclerosis; other studies indicate positive effects in other areas, like the prevention of bone weakening in women and the promotion of prostate health in men.
Your best bet for finding orange-colored tomatoes are the farmer’s market, not the supermarket, as many people unfamiliar with health often avoid foods that are different or unfamiliar. This is why you aren’t likely to see your grocer’s produce section with a treasure trove of orange tomatoes any time soon. Keep this article in mind for the summer, when farmer’s markets carrying these tomatoes open their doors to knowledgeable health consumers like you.
