How To Lower Stroke Risk: Eat Tomatoes

You say tomato, I say tomahtoe, Finnish researchers say just eat the damn thing, because lycopene, an antioxidant that is plentiful in tomatoes, appears to lower the risk of stroke. Lycopene, by the way, is also the pigment that makes tomatoes red. HealthDay reports that when researchers tracked the levels of lycopene in more than 1,000 Finnish men, aged 46 to 65, over 12 years, they found that those with the highest lycopene levels were 55 percent less likely to have a stroke (11 of 259) than those with the lowest levels of the antioxidant (25 of 258). Wait, there’s more: when the researchers focused only on strokes caused by blood clots, they found that men with the highest lycopene levels were 59 percent less likely to have a stroke than those with the lowest levels. Read more from HealthDay. Read about tomatoes, lycopene, and the antioxidant’s disease-fighting power, from Ohio State University.