Tomato makes you feel fuller, prevents snacking
There’s one magic food which can kill that overwhelming urge you get to cheat on your diet. Unfortunately, it isn’t chocolate or pastries or any of those calorie bombs you might be craving.
It’s the humble tomato, that everyday ingredient in your meals, which helps you melt those pounds off your body, finds a British study.
Researchers from the University of Reading in UK randomly gave 17 women, aged between 18 and 35 years and having normal body weight, sandwiches with cream cheese filling made of three kinds of breads – white, carrot or tomato. The subjects were then asked to rate their feeling of fullness.
Although expectations were that the carrot bread would make the women feel more satiated as it had lots of fibre, it was actually tomato bread that did so.
Researchers speculate that lycopene, an antioxidant found in abundance in tomato, may be lowering the levels of hunger hormones such as ghrelin, satisfying a person’s hunger even in lower quantities.Julie Lovegrove, the lead author of the study, said, “It was a small study, and we can't yet say what the crucial tomato ingredient is, but the results were statistically significant.”
Lovegrove, who is part of the Hugh Sinclair Human Nutrition Group at University of Reading, said further comprehensive studies were required to establish the link between tomato and hunger satiety.
It’s lycopene that gives tomato its red colour and is behind all the health benefits of the vegetable such as prevention of breast, cervical, pancreatic and other cancers and heart diseases, high cholesterol, among many others.
Unlike other vegetables and fruits, nutritional value of tomato is not lost on cooking but is actually enhanced. This is why even ketchups, tomato soups and tomato-based sauces have generous amounts of lycopene.
Other foods that contain lycopene, but in lower amounts, are watermelons, papaya, carrots and pink grapefruit.
So if you want to tuck your tummy in, tuck in some tangy tomato fare.
