Home processing of tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum): effects on in vitro bioaccessibility of total lycopene, phenolics, flavonoids, and antioxidant capacity.

Background: In order to investigate the effect of home processing on the bioaccessibility of health-related constituents of tomatoes, total lycopene, phenolics, flavonoids and antioxidant capacity were determined from seven different tomato products using an in vitro gastrointestinal digestion model. Additionally, the changes in the contents of the major tomato phenolics were determined and compared for these different tomato products using HPLC.

Results: The results revealed that paste processing and drying significantly increased the bioaccessible total lycopene content (2.