Wellness Wednesday: Benefits of Lycopene

I just love tomatoes and tomato paste in a majority of the things I cook at home. I use it from my stir fry dishes to the more complicated pastas. I also love drinking it in its juice form - though that may be due to my acquired taste- and more importantly eating it fresh. What I didnt really understand before was that I was eating something that is really healthy and that it was the riches source of a powerful antioxidant known as Lycopene.



Lycopene is supposedly abundant with the red fruits and is claimed to be helpful when it comes the heart. It was only then that I started doing some research into the topic and now would like to share with all of you what I have learned and I am sure that you would just as amazed as I was to discover how a simple household everyday recipe can be a very potent giver of health to those that consume it.



Here are the things that I have found out that Lycopene is helping provide for us:

• Breast cancer
• Cardiovascular disease
• Gingivitis
• High blood pressure
• Increasing HDL (good) cholesterol
• Male infertility (increasing sperm counts)
• Ovarian cancer
• Pre-eclampsia (pregnancy-associated high blood pressure)
• Reducing LDL (bad) cholesterol

Now am sure that after reading that you would like to have a run down list of what type of food has this quality so for your convenience here are some of the major sources of Lycopene to help get you started on a lycopene diet:

• Tomatoes and tomato products (sauces, ketchup, etc.)
• Apricots
• Pink grapefruits
• Pink guavas
• Watermelons

Tomato PSA from Thor Melsted on Vimeo.



With all that being said I do hope that you have found this information useful. Till the next time. xoxo