What are the health benefits of lycopene?

Lycopene is a phytochemical and comes under the group of carotenoids. Although chemically it is a carotene, it has no vitamin A activity. It is a safe food coloring agent. The eleven conjugated double bonds present in lycopene are responsible for its antioxidant activity. Lycopene is the most powerful quencher of singlet oxygen free radical. It is 100 times more powerful than vitamin E in experiments.

The health benefits of lycopene include:

• Heart protective
• Good antioxidant to control free radicals
• Supports bone health
• Important for eye health
• Reduces the risk of prostate, lung, stomach and breast cancer
• Good for anti aging
• Good antioxidant to treat male infertility

More research is needed to understand the value of lycopene for human health.

Tomato is the rich source for lycopene. Lycopene is present in tomato skin and so the bioavailability is bad from fresh tomato. Tomato juice and processed tomato have the highest amount of lycopene.

Foods rich in lycopene include:

• Tomatoes
• Processed tomato products such as tomato juice, tomato soup, tolmato sauce, tomato paste, tomato ketchup
• Watermelons
• Pink grapefruits
• Pink guavas
• Apricots
• Papaya

Lycopene is useful with other micronutrients and plant chemicals present in the food. Therefore, as a food supplement it may not have all the benefits that you get from tomato or other fruits.

Papaya

Christopher Columbus called papaya the “Fruit of the Angels” and this is acceped by all who have tasted this delicious fruit.

Papaya is rich in vitamin A,C, K, E, B vitamins including folic acid, carotenoids and flavonoids. Thus, it is rich in many antioxidants including lycopene. It has calcium, iron, phosphorous, potassium and magnesium and is also rich in fibre. The enzymes papain and chymopapain are present in papaya which is important for protein digestion. Papaya has almost no fat (0.1 g fat in 100 g) and 10 g carbohydrates in 100 g. Thus it is also a good food for persons with diabetes. 100 g ripe fruit has less than 40 calories and this make it ideal food for all. All these make papaya very healthy.

There are many health benefits from papaya and they include:

• Protects against heart diseases
• Helps digestive health
• Has anti-inflammatory effects
• Protection against vision loss in old people
• Promotes lung health
• It is helpful to prevent prostate problems
• It supports our imune system
• It prevents nausea including morning sickness and motion scikness
• The seeds have bitter taste and is good for expelling the worms from the intestines
• Could prevent colon cancer

Papaya is available throughout the year and you could eat as much as you like. The orange or red coulour papaya could be consumed immediately. The yellow ones must be kept for few days before eating and the green ones you could cook.

What are the Rainbow Colour Antioxidants and Phytochemicals?

Antioxidants and phytochemicals rich food lower the risk of heart diseases as well as cancer. We must eat enough vegetables and fruits everyday.

The colour of fruits and vegetables are coing from the antioxidants and phytochemicals and the are

• Red colour – Lycopene, food rich is tomato, watermelon, pink grapefruit etc.
• Orange colour – Beta-carotene, rich in carrot, mango etc.
• Yellow colour – Beta-cryptothanxin, rich in pineapple, peach, orange etc.
• Green colour – Indoles, rich in cabbage, broccoli, kale etc.
• Purple colour – Anthocyanins, rich in grapes, blueberries, egg plants etc.
• White colour – Allicin, rich in garlic, onion, chives etc.

Eating everyday the vegetables and fruits containing these antioxidants and phytochemicals are very healthy.