Besides sun cream, science has discovered another very useful tool to prevent skin cancer: tomatoes. Research by the Department of Food Science and Technology at Ohio State's College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences has found that this fruit contains a nutrient that reduces the risk of the appearance of skin tumours by up to 50 percent.
The researchers fed a group of mice with tomato powder for a period of over thirty weeks and then subjected them to the effects of ultraviolet radiation. And the result was that the individuals which had consumed that diet showed a 50% lower risk of developing skin tumours than those who had not been fed with tomato essence.
The key is in one of the components of this vegetable: lycopene, which is the chemical compound responsible, among many other things, for the characteristic red colour of tomatoes.
The bad part of the study is that only male mice seemed to benefit from this. Females, for their part, developed the same percentage of tumours, regardless of whether or not they had eaten tomatoes.
Source: quo.es
