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Does Eating Tomatoes Help Prostate Cancer?
Prostate cancer cannot always be prevented, but the risk of it can be reduced with a healthy diet and lifestyle. One food often praised for its potential protective effect against prostate cancer is tomato. But is this red fruit really such a miracle cure as is sometimes said? The World Cancer Research Fund answers this question.
Lycopene: protective substance in tomatoes
Tomatoes contain lycopene. This is a natural dye that gives tomatoes the red color. The following applies: the redder the tomato, the more lycopene it contains. In addition, lycopene is an antioxidant. Antioxidants help repair DNA damage in our body cells. Along with the vitamin C from tomatoes, lycopene reacts with antioxidants in other foods. As a result, the effect of lycopene on repair of DNA damage is stronger.
Cooking, baking or pureeing tomatoes, for example in a soup or pasta sauce, releases more lycopene that can be absorbed by the body. For example, tomato puree contains four times as much available lycopene as a regular whole fresh tomato. In addition to tomatoes, watermelon, grapefruit, papaya, guava and apricot also contain lycopene.
What does research show?
The largest ever study into nutrition, lifestyle and cancer by the World Cancer Research Fund shows that it is not yet clear whether eating tomatoes and other products made from tomatoes reduces the risk of prostate cancer. The results of different studies differ too much from each other.
For example, a large study among 50,000 men shows a protective effect of tomato products. In this study, men who ate more than 500 grams of pureed tomatoes in the form of tomato sauce, ketchup or soup per week had a smaller chance of developing prostate cancer than men who ate little or no tomato products. There are only studies in which researchers found no effect of tomato or tomato products on the risk of prostate cancer.
Enjoying tomatoes
More research is needed to say whether tomatoes and tomato products can help reduce the risk of prostate cancer. But you can still enjoy a bowl of warm tomato soup, a plate of pasta with tomato sauce or a handful of snack tomatoes in between.
Tomatoes, like all other types of fruit and vegetables, fit into a healthy diet and are full of good nutrients. Be careful with ready-to-eat tomato products. This often contains a lot of salt and/or sugar. For example, a bowl of ready-made tomato soup can contain more than 12 grams of sugar, equal to three sugar cubes.
Eating fruits and vegetables helps to reduce your risk of cancer. Want to know what else you can do to reduce your risk of cancer? View this ten recommendations of the World Cancer Research Fund for the prevention of cancer, prepared on the basis of scientific research.
This article was produced in collaboration with the World Cancer Research Fund. World Cancer has been the authority in the Netherlands in the field of nutrition, exercise, body weight and cancer for more than 25 years. There are no guarantees against cancer, but by eating and living healthily we can reduce the risk of cancer.
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