Homestead mailing list

["Lynda" <lurine AT softcom.net>]

Hmmmm, now that took me on an interesting connect the dots.  Raw tomatoes 
(1/2 cup) has 8.3 mg.  I would think your pickled would fall in the same 
range as a veggie juice cocktail (same amount of heat being applied) where a 
1/2 cup serving has 11.7 mg.   Now, the interesting thing is that, I would 
have thought, tomato puree (1/2 cup) would have the same amount or more 
lycopene than tomato sauce (1/2 cup) since puree is more concentrated than 
sauce.  Not the case, 20.8 to 21.9 with tomato sauce the winner.

So, more research shows that it is effected by the lipids and B-carotene 
plus the processing (cooking) and amount of heat applied.  Sooooo, get out 
your chemistry set <g>

All in all, that would explain why they say spaghetti sauce and pizza sauce 
(homemade the old Noni Italian way) are the best sources of lycopene.

Lynda

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "EarthNSky" <erthnsky AT bellsouth.net>


> As I snacked tonight on some pickled tomatoes, I wondered how the
> pickling process affects lycopene, if at all, so I did a search and in
> the process, found this site
> http://www.drgreger.org/december2003.html
> Now, granted the guy is a vegetarian (I think) and has an agenda (to
> promote his DVD), but man, I thought I was doing a good thing by eating
> all that fish!  I love fish! (salmon, tuna, sardines, smoked anything!!_
> I subscribe to the notion that the body craves what it needs, and I
> crave fish (and pickled tomatoes, and other things most people won't
> touch, like raw asparagus.) :)
> Anyway, just in case anyone else is wondering about the lycopene thing,
> heat makes lycopene more bio-ready and while pickled tomatoes are not
> cooked, they are subjected to heat in the canning process, so I am
> guessing that pickled tomatoes have more lycopene than raw tomatoes, but
> less than cooked tomatoes.  If anyone knows for sure whether or not this
> is true, I'm all ears.
> There's a blurb in there about Mad Cow, too, one that I had not heard,
> even though this article is 3+ years old.