Get lots of sun over the long weekend?  Of course, you want to use a shot-glass-size amount of sunscreen every day, without fail.  But, I ran across a new way to protect your skin by eating tomato paste!  It sounds weird, I know, but let’s take a look at the study on Dr. Oz’s web site www.realage.com.

In the study, volunteers ate a normal diet, but added about 2-1/2 tablespoons of tomato paste mixed with a couple of teaspoons of olive oil every day for 10 weeks.  A control group took just olive oil.  The volunteers sat under a sun lamp at the beginning, middle and end of the study…enough to lightly sunburn their shoulders.  By week 10, the tomato-paste group showed 40% less sun damage than those that just took olive oil.

Scientists think it has to do with the antioxidant lycopene in the tomatoes.  The oil, by the way, might help the lycopene be better absorbed by the body.  Either way, it’s time to bring on the pizza, the pasta, the tomato-basil soup… Is it lunch time, yet?