History of Carotenoids

Lycopene was introduced into the Western world after the Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortes was offered some tomatoes by the Aztec emperor Montezuma. Cortes disregarded this courteous gesture and went on to conquer Mexico from 1529 to 1531. In the states bordering Mexico — Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California — tomatoes and other Mexican-Indian foods soon began to be adopted but also made their way to Europe. In Italy, tomatoes were mentioned as early as in 1554 and were then slowly assimilated. Their initial color was yellow (porno d oro) they obtained their red appearance only after years of cultivation. Today, tomatoes, the major source of lycopene, are an important part of the Mediterranean diet. 

Awareness of lycopene as a potentially beneficial carotenoid in the nutritional and medical sciences is less than 10 years old. Therefore, comparatively few scientific data are available from animal and human studies. But in this short time, a number of features of lycopene have emerged that are unique among the common carotenoids, quite apart from its exceptionally high singlet oxygen quenching capacity in vitro. The most obvious distinction is that unlike the other hydrocarbon carotenoids, a- and P-carotene, lycopene has no provitamin A activity. 

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