Tomatoes have the “Fat Burn” Effect“
Lycopene triggers your brown fat to burn down harmful extra body fat.
A study in Portugal showed this in a totally clear way. Scientists observed young healthy grad student women of normal body size and told them to eat and exercise the way they normally, no changes for this research study. They were however given one ripe tomato to eat an hour before lunch every single day. That’s it.
They measured their body composition. So they put them under a scanner to look at how much visceral fat they had. They measured their waistline. They measured their blood cholesterol and their blood sugars and all the parameters like inflammatory markers.
The results were truly astounding: after a month of eating just one tomato a day, these ladies were able to lose one pound with just one tomato one hour before lunch. That’s the power of the lycopene in the tomato. You don’t have to do extra exercise, you don’t have to limit your calories, just eat the way you want. That just shows us, how powerful a food actually is.
To really fire up lycopene, pick a tomato off a vine and eat it like an apple. If you want the lycopene to be supercharged, you want to heat it up, sauté it at about 90 celcuis/190° Fahrenheit for 20 minutes. This will amp up the power of that lycopene by 250% because the heat will change the chemistry of the lycopene into a form your body loves to absorb.
By the way, lycopene likes to dissolve in body fat. In fact this has been studied at Tus University who fed some young people a tomato or foods that contain lycopene. They were able to track where that lycopene goes. You know where it goes? They found, it goes right to your butt! Right to your thighs. “ (Source: Dr William Li from his podcast with Mel Robbins https://www.youtube.com/shorts/nBJS2JBaV4s)
I was born in 1965 in Nuremberg, Germany, to a German mother and a Turkish father. Growing up in a blend of two rich cultures gave me a deep appreciation for food, farmers, and the traditions that nourish us—though I didn’t fully realize this until much later in life.
So how did I end up as a health store owner?
Well, life has a funny way of guiding us toward our purpose.
In my early 20s, I worked in export for a well-known sports company in Germany. But I had a dream of living abroad. That dream led me first to Ireland, then to Australia, and eventually back to Ireland—where I’ve made my home ever since.
