Organic ketchup brands have about three times as much of a drug that protects against breast, pancreatic, prostate and intestinal cancer on top of reducing the risk of heart attacks in them as non-organic brands have. The drug, lycopene, is reddening.
Wanting to test whether the coloring of ketchup was indicative of lycopene levels researchers at the Agricultural Research Service in Albany, California tested 13 different brands. The coloring was less significant than the origin of the tomatoes.
One organic brand held 183 micrograms of lycopene per gram of ketchup compared to just 60 micrograms per gram in fast food ketchup. As a rule of thumb, choose the darkest colored ketchups, say the researchers.
