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TOMATOES
A few years back tomatoes hit the headlines when Edward Giovannucci, a researcher at Harvard Medical School, announced that a diet rich in spaghetti sauce, pizza, and stewed tomatoes may lower prostate cancer risk. There's further evidence that tomatoes may also reduce the risks of pancreatic, bladder, cervical, and digestive tract cancers, says Inke Paetau, a researcher at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Most research points to lycopene, a cancer-fighting antioxidant particularly abundant in tomatoes. Watermelon, pink grapefruit, and guava are rich sources as well.
The bottom line:
One leading lycopene supplement claims to contain 5,000 mcg extracted from tomato seeds. That's easily as much as the heartiest tomato eaters got in the Harvard study. But don't plunk down your cash yet.
"The problem is this," Giovannucci explains. "We were looking at tomatoes and tomato-based foods in the diet, not lycopene." True, lycopene is the likely reason tomatoes cut cancer risk, but other chemicals could be interacting with it. Besides, a bottle of just 30 capsules will cost you as much as $21. For that you could get half a dozen jars of primo pasta sauce.
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