Tomatoes & Lycopene

[MelanieC]

I've got so many questions stored in my head and remember I'm new to all this so bear with me.

I know that you get lycopene from cooked tomatoes. Does anyone eat cooked tomatoes or tomato sauce for this benefit? Could you get the same effect by dehydrating them?

[Seedy]

My understanding, is that in order to get at the lycopene in a raw tomato you need to blend it to break open the cell walls. Sun-dried tomatoes have about 12 times the lycopene per ounce as fresh tomatoes. I make tomato soup at least once a week by blending fresh roma tomatoes, soaked sun-dried tomatoes and avocado (lycopene needs a little fat to be absorbed by the body). Easy, tasty and fast way to get your lycopene.
Seedy

[Dimond]

Yes, blending is the best way to get all you need.

[Gaius]

Lycopene is not an essential nutrient for humans. It's simply a marketing ploy for people to buy more ketchup and pasta sauce. It has zero added benefit to anybody on a raw vegan diet.

[Veronica01]

You have to think, why on earth would we NEED MORE of a certain nutrient if it was not available raw and what we ate through the past tens of thousands of years.

Dr. Graham has said something to the effect of at what cost are you willing to compromise the rest of the thousands of nutrients in a food, in order to release more of a single one?

Also we've only discovered 10 PERCENT of all nutrients out there, so destroying all the unknown probably necessary nutrients to take in more of one seems like fragmented thinking and marketing ploys to me.

[Dimond]

Yes, but it has many health benefits, including protecting you from the sun. But you can also get it from these other foods: gac fruit, tomatoes, watermelon, pink grapefruit, pink guava, papaya, red bell pepper, seabuckthorn, goji/wolfberry, rosehip.

[MelanieC]

Very interesting stuff. Thanks for being patient with me. I know I'm going to have tons of questions like this. It's all a learning process :)

Where is the best place to get raw organic sundried tomatoes? Whole foods has them without oil but they are not organic and dried (which duh - they are sundried, This was a duh meant for me, lol). The organic ones are in olive oil and get nasty when I refrigerate them like they say.

[Veronica01]

I can only find non raw sundried tomatoes at the health stores. My friend uses a dehydrator and makes her own and some how they turn out sweet, soft and bright red still. They dont go that yucky brown red colour, even after a year. I think thats one thing i might like a dehydrator for.