Spaghetti prevents cancer

The scientists processed red tomatoes into two kinds of sauce. One was rich in cislycopene - the ‘bent’ variety - while the other mostly contained all-trans-lycopene, the linear form.
Corn oil was added to both sauces, but the key to producing ‘bent’ lycopene was a 40-minute second round of heating at 127c. The resulting sauce contained nine times more ‘bent’ lycopene.  A small study was then conducted on 12 volunteers who were given both types of sauce to eat. After each meal, blood samples-were taken and analysed over nine and a half hours. Lycopene blood levels were 55 per cent higher after consumption of the new sauce, the scientists found. Dr Schwartz presented the results yesterday at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society in Philadelphia.  He said the research suggested it should be possible to produce healthy ‘bent’ lycopene in the kitchen.  ‘Some people like to cook tomato sauce for prolonged periods, sometimes reheating it day after day, because it tastes better on the second and third day,’ he added.
‘They add fat by using oil or meat, and that’s going to start to induce cis-isomers of lycopene if fat is present and the cooking continues.’ - DM