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　　If you’ve always assumed that tomatoes are very nutritious, you’reabsolutely right. They’re a good source of lycopene 1 and beta-carotene 2, but consider this: if you eat a tomato without adding alittle fat, say a drizzle3 of olive oil, your body will not absorb allthese nutrients. Gregory Brown, who is now a professor of exercisescience, learned this the hard way. He is not a big fan of tomatoes,but back when he was in graduate school at Iowa State, he volunteeredfor a nutrition study, agreeing to eat big bowls of salad greens withtomatoes and dressing, all in exchange for a few hundred bucks. WhatBrown did not know at the time is that some of the salads had fat-freeor reduced-fat dressings, while othershad regular oil-based Italian, adistinction that turned out to be very significant. Researchers foundthat when people ate the fatfree salads, there was virtually noabsorption of the carotenoids4, like beta-carotene or lycopene. Studyauthor Wendy White says there are a few other ways to maximize theabsorption of these healthy compounds, namely by chopping and chewing,which breaks down the plant material。

　　Wendy White: The finer the particle size, themore finely chopped, or homogenized, or they probably chewed thecarrot, the better the absorption of the betacarotene。

　　如果你一直都认为番茄非常有营养，那么你绝对是正确的。它们富含番茄红素和β－胡萝卜素，但想想看：如果你吃一个没有添加一点脂肪——比如说倒入若干橄榄油——的西红柿，你的身体将无法全部吸收这些营养。现在是运动科学教授的格雷戈里·布朗费了一番周折才懂得这点。他不是“番茄迷”，但当他在爱荷华州立大学上研究生的时候，他自愿参加了一项营养研究，同意吃几大碗配有西红柿和调料的色拉用绿叶蔬菜，只是为了换几百美元。布朗那时还不知道其中一些色拉添加的是不含脂肪或是脂肪较低的调料，而其他都是一般的含油的意大利色拉酱，结果表明这个区别是非常显著的。研究人员发现，当人们吃的是不含脂肪的色拉，实际上并没有吸收β－胡萝卜素或番茄红素等类胡萝卜素。这项研究的发起人温迪·怀特说，有一些其他方法可以充分吸收这些健康的化合物，即将它们剁碎并咀嚼来分解植物物质。

　　温迪-怀特：颗粒越小，切得越碎或越均匀，或者人们将胡萝卜嚼得越碎，对β －胡萝卜素的吸收也就越充分。