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It’s been pretty established now that antioxidants are good for heart health.
Red wine has been one of the best ways to get this, at least according to health articles everywhere.
But now, you may have even fewer reasons to break out that red wine. Researchers have found a way to pack super tomatoes with antioxidants.
The experiment, done by co-author Dr. Yang Zhang at the John Innes Centre in the UK, will be considered a “medicinal plant.”
According to Dr. Zhang, “Medicinal plants with high value are often difficult to grow and manage, and need very long cultivation times to produce the desired compounds. Our research provides a fantastic platform to quickly produce these valuable medicinal compounds in tomatoes. Target compounds could be purified directly from tomato juice.”
The study involved adding the protein AtMYVB12 to tomatoes. It works as a faucet for increasing or decreasing compounds that are produced in a plant.
After adding these proteins, they activated phenylpropanoids, which are a polyphenol that helps prevent cancer and heart disease.
The supertomatoes produced from this have the same amount of polyphenols as 50 bottles of red wine. This is good news, since though people have sung the praises of these antioxidants for years, it’s currently not very possible to get enough of them to get the benefits of them.
Tomatoes are easy to supercharge and easy to grow, making them the perfect crop to use to get antioxidants. And because tomatoes are one of those great foods that don’t lose nutritional value when processed, a consumer could reap its benefits in any form.
So keep an eye out! These tomatoes may be available soon.
