Health benefits of tomato ketchup sauce

Tomato sauce has many health benefits. This comes from the natural tomatoes that are used to make the sauce.

Tomato sauce was first sold in 1830 by a New England farmer who put crushed juicy ripe tomatoes in bottles to sell. This quickly caught on and several tomoato growers copied the idea. But it was HJ Heinz who truly took tomato kethup global by adding the product to his line of pickles in 1872. By 1900 there were 100 different tomato sauce manufacturers.

They key to kethcup's health benefits comes from its core ingredient - tomatoes. Tomatoes are an incredibly healthy fruit (yes fruit, not a vegetable). They contain an antitoxidant known as lycopene which gives the tomatoes their distinctive red colour. Lycopene itself is a carotenoid that has complex scientific properties. But this wonderful little ingredient has been linked to reduced riss of cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis and it is even said to help infertile men icrease their sperm count.

Eating tomatoes gives the body this antitoxidant, however, and this is the big point, actually eating ketchup provides the body with MORE of this vital ingredient than eating normal tomatoes. This is what gives ketchup its health benefits.

Processed tomatoes are used to make ketchup. When the tomatoes are processed, the cells which contain lycopene are split which allows the healthy chemical to be released. Medical studies have proven that lycopene is more readily absorbed by the body when it comes from processed tomatoes. Usually processed tomatoes in this condition are found in ketchup, pasta sauce, tomato puree and other types of tomato sauces. This makes it much stronger and more effective.The same principle applies to tomatoes that are cooked as the heat breaks down the cell matrix and frees the chemical which allows the body to absorb it more effectively. Nutritionists have even said that a dollop of tomato sauce counts as one of the recommended five portions of vegetables a day.

The following ingredients are those listed in bottles of Heinz tomato ketchup. Variations of the ingredients can be used for home made recipes though.

• Tomato concentrate
• spirit vinegar
• corn syrup
• sugar
• salt
• spice and herb extracts (including celery)
• spice and garlic powder
• Allspice
• cloves
• cinnamon
• onion
• other vegetables
  

If you're still a little bit skeptical that ketchup could actually help to keep us healthy then have a look at the scientific studies. Several institutions that have carried out this research including Harvard which conducted a SIX year study into ketchup's health benefits. There was also a group of scientists that performed research in Italy but the most well known academics to have researched the subject come from the following....

• Ben-Gurion University in Israel
• University of Toronto
• Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health

There has been a wealth of information published online about tomato ketchup's health benefits. There are a few links below from when studies were released that give more information so try clicking on them, too.

Scientists and nutritionists have done lots of research into the health benefits of tomato ketchup. These findings have been published in national newspapers around the world. In the UK, the Daily Mail reported that Tomato Ketchup helps to fight heart disease. They also reported that tomato ketchup could cut the risk of breast cancer. The Daily Telegraph published an article in which researchers claimed that broccoli and tomato ketchup could prevent prostate cancer.