Apparently, the prevalence of obesity in non-Hispanic white women is 35% and in Mexican American women 45%. At the same time, the death rate for the first group from coronary heart disease is 243 per 100,000 of population, but for the second group is a dramatic one-third lower 182.
When you look at the likelihood of ischemic stroke, this difference is even greater: more than 40% lower, 45 vs 32 deaths per 100,000 of population.
Importantly, one of the largest parts of the Mexican diet is cooked tomatoes. Scientists from Lycotec based in Cambridge, UK, have discovered that during the cooking process certain components of tomato extracts cluster around health-valuable molecules from other fruit and vegetables, and protect them from being inactivated not only during cooking but during digestion too. As a result, more bioactive molecules, antioxidants and vitamins can be delivered and absorbed when the meal is cooked with tomatoes or in a tomato sauce.
This thinking is also at the core of the Mediterranean diet. Lycopene, the red pigment of tomatoes, plays the key role in this cooking process and is the central element of a new, patented technology which models it, called Lycosome. This technology can boost delivery and efficacy of biologically active molecules and can be used to fortify functional food and beverages.
Lycosome has been validated in a number of clinical trials, the results of one of which, when efficacy of whey protein was increased more than 100-fold, has recently been published.
Lycotec has now initiated a transfer of its Lycosome technology for the industrial production of other health-valuable food extracts, vitamins and minerals to create a new generation of products to support and protect the heart and brain.
If you have a beverage product containing lycopene, it could do very well in the functional category of the Beverage Innovation Awards@drinktec. But please move fast, as entries close 19 July!
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