Can Tomato Ketchup Prevent a Heart Attack?

A Finnish study published in the April 2007 British Journal of Nutrition was the first major study to prove the cholesterol benefit of tomatoes in humans.  The authors took 21 healthy volunteers and placed them on two separate but serial tomato diets and monitored the changes in their cholesterol profiles as well as measured the amount of circulating LDL resistant to oxidation.  The first diet was a low tomato one in which the subjects were not allowed to eat any tomato products as well as other lycopene containing foods such as watermelon, apricots, and guava.  After three weeks, they were all then placed on a high tomato diet comprised of consuming 400ml of tomato juice and 30gms of ketchup with each meal daily for the next three weeks.  The authors reported that on the high tomato diet, total cholesterol fell by 6% and LDL fell by 13%.  Levels of circulating LDL resistant to oxidation also increased 13%.  These changes directly correlated to increases in lycopene and other carotenoids.  This study did not look at other outcomes such as heart disease risk.  Other population studies have suggested that higher levels of lycopene are associated with lower rates of heart attacks.

Despite this growing amount of evidence demonstrating the chemical benefits of tomatoes and lycopene in humans, today there is no study that conclusively proves that eating a high processed tomato diet lowers the risk of a heart attack.   And remember, processed tomato foods like spaghetti sauce and ketchup can be very high in salt which can contribute to increased blood pressure.  Nonetheless, the evidence is intriguing and tomatoes are a well tolerated and safe staple of our American diet.  Hopefully more research will be forthcoming that might conclusively show that ketchup can help prevent a heart attack.