Better Health in a Ketchup Bottle

There's one way to get more out of your ketchup bottle, and it doesn't involve balancing one of them on top of the other to transfer the last drops from the old container into the new one. Going organic with this condiment could dramatically increase the amount of lycopene -- an antioxidant that might reduce your risk of heart disease -- that you get in a serving.

A recent comparison revealed organic ketchup to contain three times as much lycopene as the conventional kind: 183 micrograms per gram versus just 59.

Why You Want It
One of the jobs that this nutrient does is help handcuff free radicals (which can damage cells and chromosomes) and escort them out of the body before they can cause problems, including heart disease. Lycopene is responsible for the pink and red hues of guava, watermelon, pink grapefruit and the ubiquitous tomato. But it doesn't just spill out of tomatoes; it needs to be coaxed out of there like a kitten from a crawl space.

Three Ways to Do It

1. Slice, dice or puree them. Processing tomatoes helps unleash the lycopene.
2. Eat them with a bit of fat. Lycopene is a fat-soluble nutrient, meaning it must latch on to fat to be absorbed by the intestinal wall, so use olive, walnut or canola oil on your salads or toss some avocado into the mix.
3. Heat 'em up. Heat converts the lycopene into a form that's easier for your body to absorb by a factor of more than 16.

The YOU Docs, Mike Roizen and Mehmet Oz, are authors of "YOU: Being Beautiful -- The Owner's Manual to Inner and Outer Beauty." To submit questions and find ways to grow younger and healthier, go to www.RealAge.com, the docs' online home.