Fantastic news for pasta al pomodoro lovers the world over! Scientists proved that you should always cook tomatoes with olive oil. Tomatoes and extra virgin olive oil, THE two cornerstone ingredients of the Mediterranean diet, are chock-full of nutrients essential to our well-being on their own. But it turns out, cooked together they’re even more nutritious. Teatro Naturale, an online publication focused on food, agriculture, and the environment, reports:
“Adding olive oil to diced tomatoes while cooking greatly increases the absorption of lycopene.”
Lycopene is a powerful compound that gives tomatoes their bright red color. We first learned about lycopene from Pasquale Imperato, our Piennolo farmer. He taught us that you need to heat tomatoes to activate the lycopene. Now Teatro Naturale takes things a step further.
“Lycopene is the main carotenoid found in tomatoes and is thought to be responsible for reducing the risk of certain cancers and heart disease.”
They reference an Australian study measuring plasma lycopene concentrations. The study found:
“an 82% increase in plasma trans-lucopene and a 40% increase in cis-lucopene in the 11 subjects who consumed tomatoes cooked in olive oil.”
Contrarily:
“there was no significant change in trans-lucopene and a 15% increase in cis-lucopene concentrations in the 12 subjects consuming tomatoes cooked without olive oil.”
Tomatoes + extra virgin olive oil is one of the most delicious combinations known to humanity. Cook your tomatoes and cook ’em with EVOO to get the biggest nutritional boost. But make no mistake, Teatro Naturale wants you to know that not all extra virgin is created equal:
“Tomatoes should always be cooked with high quality extra virgin olive oil
High quality! That’s the keyword. That’s the only olive oil that can be called one of the healthier fats you can cook with and it’s positively loaded with antioxidants and polyphenols.
Read the full article on Teatro Naturale here (link in Italian).