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Processing and Bioavailability (WG2) page 7
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Tomatoes can be processed into a number of different products, such as:
- canned tomato preserves (such as whole peeled tomatoes, tomato juice, tomato pulp,
tomato sauce, tomato paste). Whatever the technological flow-sheet, these products are
finally canned and stabilised by heat treatment. Only salt, sugar and citric acid are usually
added to standardise the final products;
- tomato-based foods (such as tomato soup, tomato ketchup, etc). In this case many other
ingredients can be added to make up the final product, which is canned and stabilised by
heat treatment;
- dried tomatoes (tomato powder, tomato flakes, whole, halved and sliced dried tomatoes).
These products are dehydrated by different techniques, and low moisture content
represents the stabilising factor;
- tomato-containing foods. Tomato is a major ingredient of many typical foods (such as
pizza, bolognaise sauce and chili, to name but a few). The variety of tomato-containing
foods makes it impossible to identify a general processing flow-sheet. Products can be
heat-treated, refrigerated, frozen or dehydrated, and can be stored in different conditions,
depending on their stability.
In addition, many of the above-mentioned products require further home processing
before consumption, such as cooking, baking or rehydration.
Finally, some new processing and preservation technologies have been experimented on
in recent years in order to minimise the technological damage and improve the sensory
properties of final products. These aspects are treated elsewhere in this document.
It is thus important to evaluate clearly the behaviour of lycopene during industrial
processing and the other stages prior to consumption (storage, cooking processes and
preparations). In particular, consideration must be made of those processes which may
accelerate the degradation process (rises in temperature, contact with oxidatives) and of those
which destroy the tissue structure, thus rendering lycopene less protected and therefore more
open to attack, but at the same time probably more readily assimilated by man.
The latter factor is of vital importance in the evaluation of whether the potential
antioxidant property of the lycopene contained in the tomato and its industrial derivatives can
actually be assimilated by man and to what extent it can thus effectively exert its protective
role against the considerable number of serious degenerative diseases correlated to the
presence of free radicals.