Most researchers while disagreeing on the finer points agree that at many vitamins and minerals decrease when food is cooked. One example brought up to counter this in almost every raw food article by the token nutritionist is that cooked tomatoes have more lycopene than raw (a sign they say that cooking releases more of some nutrients). Guess what – blended tomatoes have just as much lycopene as cooked too!

i wonder if they ever tested a tomato after someone had chewed it thoroughly. i mean, teeth are the original blender..
i reckon they'd find the lycopene content was just as high or higher than a cooked tomato. i dunno about blended tomato tho, you'd probably have to chew it a lot for it to be equal

NEET: Lettuce is actually one of the best sources of organic silica, which is far more important in osteoperosis than calcium. If you think about it, pure calcium is what a stick of chalk is. It's brittle and snaps easily. Silica (the "other" mineral in bones) is what makes up hair and nails. They're flexible and much stronger than a piece of chalk. Unfortunately there's not much silica in milk, so we're the main ones singing lettuces praises instaid of the Australian Dairy Board. 

Piers

here's another - yet another - example of "science" concentrating on details and ignoring the larger picture. so then, cooked tomatoes have higher levels of lycopene - so what?! is this lycopene actually usable by the body in it's altered cooked state? it has been said before that cooking denatures fresh food so that the body sees it as a foreign substance to be eliminated - all the lycopene in the world aint gonna help then. the components of a food act together and it is this symbiosis that is of far more importance than individual nutrient quantities. also being a fruit -  cooking tomato changes it from alkaline to rather acidic residue in the body.

why do we need so much darn lycopene anyway? i have to laugh when certain foods are quoted as superfoods which contain high levels of particular nutrients which - for an example - lower the risk of or prevent cancer. if you're eating a raw food diet and living correctly then why the hell do you need something that lowers the risk of cancer? - a lifestyle disease caused by incorrect living and especially cooked food!

so eat your cooked tomatoes because they're high in lycopene which will help to ease some of the damage done by consuming cooked food. 

apparently cast iron is really really high in iron - i might go and chew on a bar......

thanks sheryl - you wouldn't be able to have a friendly chat with the universe would you, and use your influence to bump up my other ACTUAL karma points. not sure what the current balance is, but i'm sure it's in the red.....

going by your personality and spirit that shines through here on the forum..your actual karma should be smokin hot!MM

I get masses of lycopene from my breakfast of watermelon, masses of it. In fact watermelons have over 60% more lycopene than tomatoes.

! cup has 6979 mcg, 1 wedge has 12,962 mcg, 1 15" melon has 204,756 mcg and if you only eat 10 small watermelon balls a day, you would still eat 5529 mcg of lycopene. But hey who can stop at 10 balls?

This debate is all meaningless anyway as the cells have not read the research details on lycopene. The organism simply selects whatever it needs and disposes of the rest.


joss