Back in the 80’s an Adventist Health Study found strong protective relationships against prostate cancer with increasing consumption of legumes citrus dried fruit nuts and tomatoes

In the 90’s a Harvard study focuses attention on Tomatoes which appear to be especially beneficial, they suspected it might be the red pigment in tomatoes called lycopene which has greater antioxidant power than some of the other pigments, like the orange beta-carotene pigment and carrots or cantaloupes.

The lycopene dramatically kills off prostate cancer cells in a petri dish even weighed down at the levels one would expect in one’s bloodstream after just eating some Tomatoes so of course the Heinz ketchup company along with manufacturers of lycopene supplements petitioned the fda to allow them to print health claims on their products they were essentially denied saying that the evidence was very limited preliminary with no endorsement allowed for ketchup or supplements by that time further population stays had cast doubt on the lycopene theory consumers of high dietary intakes of lycopene didn’t seem to have lower cancer rates after all but who has high dietary intakes of lycopene those that eat the most pizza so maybe it’s no surprise there are mixed results what we need is to put lycopene to the test it started with a case study a 62 year old man with terminal prostate cancer failed surgery failed chemotherapy metastases all over spread to the bone and so he was sent to hospice to die so he took it upon himself to initiate phyto therapy plant-based therapy taking the amount of like of being found in a quarter cup of tomato sauce or a tablespoon of tomato paste every day his PSA a measure of tumor bulk started out as 365 but dropped to 140 the next month and then down to 8 his metastases started disappearing and as a his last follow-up appeared to be living happily ever after but when given in higher dose pill form it didn’t seem to work a 2013 review of all such lycopene supplement trials failed to support the initial optimism in fact they were just happens that lycopene pills didn’t end up causing more cancer like beta carotene pills did but then came 2014 researchers in Italy have been giving the largest doses they could of lycopene selenium and isolated green tea compounds to men with pre cancerous prostate lesions hoping they could prevent full-blown cancer but in 2014 the expanded results of a similar trial were published in which selenium and vitamin E supplements resulted in more cancer yikes so these researchers stopped their trial and broke the code to unblind the results NNT those taking high doses of lycopene green tea catechins and selenium appeared to get more cancer than those who just got sugar pills the potential implications are dramatic said the lead researcher given them current massive worldwide use of such compounds ‘as alleged preventive supplementation’s in prostate and other cancers what went wrong well after the beta carotene pill debacle researchers measured cellular damage at different natural and unnatural doses of beta-carotene at dietary doses beta-carotene suppress cellular damage but at higher supplemental doses it not only appeared to stop working but caused more damage and the same with lycopene both lycopene and beta-carotene afforded protection against DNA damage that the kinds of levels one might see in people eating lots of tomatoes or sweet potatoes levels comparable with those seen in the blood of individuals who consumed a carotenoid rich healthy diet however at the kind of blood concentrations that one might get taking pills the ability to protect the cell against such free radical damage was rapidly lost and indeed the presence of high levels of beta-carotene and lycopene may actually serve to increase the extent of DNA damage so no wonder high-dose lycopene pills didn’t work phyto-chemicals maybe guardians of our health but the safety of consuming concentrated extracts is unknown the protective benefits of a phytochemical rich diet is best obtained through whole plant foods the food industry has different ideas though soon there may be phytochemical fortified bacon martinis and ice cream says this article in the journal food technology if they can find just the right mix of plant compounds they quote hope to reconstruct foods that once contributed to illness and disease to offer significant health benefits you

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