Lycopene Is Garbage  -Roger Mason

Nearly all the health food stores, drug stores, vitamin mega-corporations, and vitamin Internet sites sell lycopene. Everyone is selling lycopene- except Young Again®. We don’t sell garbage. Why are we the only site in the whole wide world  screaming "FRAUD"? Why isn’t anyone else telling you this is useless, and will not help your prostate? -or anything else. Even our nemesis QuackWatch is too stupid to get it.  Studies proving what a fraud it is are in the major medical journals. Can’t anyone else out of seven billion people see this? The international clinical research proves it overwhelmingly. Fraud! The worldwide published medical literature proves it is useless.

Tomatoes, like potatoes, eggplants, and bell peppers, are members of the poisonous Nightshade family. This family includes tobacco, belladonna, Jimson weed, and other deadly poisons. They all contain the deleterious alkaloid solanine. Tomatoes also contain toxic tomatine. The alkaloids in just one tomato a day, for a year, would kill your entire family if taken all at once. Scientific fact. The macrobiotic philosophy warns against eating tomatoes, potatoes, bell peppers, or eggplants. For centuries tomatoes were con-sidered an ornamental plant that was not fit for human (or animal) consumption. In America tomatoes were rarely eaten 100 years ago. Asians and Africans rarely use them, and they have the lowest prostate disease rates in the world. Many people have gotten arthritis, and other relief, from taking Nightshade vegetables out of their diets. There are scientific studies to verify all this. Did you know that the only real source of lycopene is COOKED tomatoes in oil? You can literally drink a gallon of tomato juice a day, and not raise your blood serum lycopene one iota. If the tomatoes are not cooked in oil or fat of some kind the lycopene simply cannot be absorbed.

You must measure lycopene levels with serum (fatty), and not plasma (watery) blood diagnosis. Most of the recent “studies” used blood plasma measurement, instead of blood serum. These are worthless. Lycopene is oil soluble, and will not dissolve in water. Any scientist who measures plasma lycopene is prima facie incompetent. At UCLA (Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers Preview(CEBP) v 10, 2001), for example, they claimed low plasma lycopene was correlated with prostate cancer. The same scam was done at Harvard Medical School (Cancer Research 1999), American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 2004), Yale University (Journal of the American College of Nutrition 2004), Umea University in Sweden (Cancer Causes and Controls 2001), and again at Harvard (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 2004),  Plasma lycopene levels have no validity at all, since lycopene simply cannot dissolve in the plasma. This is worse than junk science; it is pu-poseful paid disinformation funded by the tomato industry. Other “studies” were actually based on questionnaires asking men how much pizza they remember eating!!!

When you look at the REAL studies, that weren't funded from tomato companies, you find out lycopene is useless. A real study at Harvard Medical School, doctors found 50% MORE lycopene in actual human prostate cancer tissue (Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers Preview v 5, 1996) than healthy prostates. More, not less. This would make lycopene cancer promoting! The biggest study of all (Journal of the National Cancer Institute v 82, 1990) tested the actual blood serum of 25,802 men. They did, in fact, find that both vitamin A and beta carotene blood levels were very important for good prostate health, but lycopene had no relevance. Over twenty-five thousand real men had their serum (not plasma) analyzed for lycopene, and it was found to be irrelevant. This is the largest lycopene study in the world, and is inarguable. Another study (Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers Preview v 6, 1997) tested the blood serum of 6,860 men, and drew their blood serum. No relation at all was found for lycopene and prostate health. Al-most 7,000 real men had their blood analyzed, and they could not find the slightest relation of lycopene to prostate health. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (v 86, 2007) published a large British study. The doctors at Oxford University looked at over 2,000 men in 8 countries. They compared serum blood samples to their prostate health for six years. Even adjusting for variables, to be as fair as possible, they found no relation at all with lycopene and prostate health. At the renowned Johns Hopkins University (American Journal of Epidemiology v 133, 1991) the researchers concluded that dietary intake of lycopene is not associated with prostate cancer risk. After an extensive review of the literature the doctors at Ohio State (Pure and Applied Chemistry v 74, 2002) said, “The consumption of lycopene supplements is not currently recommended for prostate cancer prevention or therapy.” What an understatement.

In Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers Preview (v 16, 2007) the famous Fred Hutchison Cancer Center studied serum lycopene in 692 real men with prostate cancer over 8 years. They compared them with 844 controls. The found no relation at all. Their conclusion was, “Lycopene and other carotenoids were unrelated to prostate cancer.” And, “No association was observed between serum lycopene and total prostate cancer.” In 2011 in the same journal (v 20), at the Hutchison Center, another study was done with 3,434 real  men. They concluded, "This study does not support a role for lycopene in prostate cancer prevention." Studying the actual serum levels of lycopene showed no relation at all.  In fact, they found, "a 10 mcg/dl increase in lycopene was also associated with an 8% increased risk of cancer." Higher lycopene meant more cancer, not less. Hats off to these fine doctors for exposing this junk.

Lycopene has no value for women either. Another study at Umea University (Cancer Causes and Controls v12, 2001) showed that women with breast cancer had higher levels of serum lycopene than healthy controls. Let's say that again...the women with the highest serum levels of lycopene had more breast cancer, not less. At the National Cancer Institute (Cancer Causes and Controls v9, 1998) the researchers found women who ate the least amount of tomato products had the lowest rates of breast cancer.

Many of the “studies” are simply paid advertisements by tomato processors. These, by law, are marked “paid advertisement”. You’ll only see this if you get the full text study from the original journal, and not just an Internet summary, or the media puppet on the 6:00 PM news. Yes, many medical journals sell ad space, and pretend these are studies. You didn’t know that, did you? When you get the full text study you will see the term  “Paid Advertisement”, since it is required by law U.S.C. Section 1734.

For over two decades now science proves repeatedly that lycopene is useless. There are no valid human studies. Hundreds of millions of dollars of this crap is sold every year all over the world. More and more extravagant claims are being made for it every year. The natural health business is no better than a bunch of used car dealers.

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