Webinar: Tomato Products, Blood Health and Labelling

Tomato News hosted a Tomato Foundation webinar on the 25th February, providing a complete update on the tomato products sample study carried out at SSICA. Coordinated by the Foundation’s president, Gwen Young, the webinar featured a presentation from Dr. Luca Sandei, scientific leader at SSICA. His presentation covered the outcome data taken from over 100 samples, in triplicate, provided by 18 companies from around the world.
 
The aim of the study was to evaluate the presence and concentrations of a list of compounds found in normal everyday tomato products also known to be the active components in a tomato supplement called Fruitflow. This supplement already has an EFSA health claim for improved blood flow or anti-thrombotic effect.
 
Dr. Sandei presented results showing normal servings of almost all tomato products contain these same compounds at similar or much higher levels than a single daily dose of the supplement.
 
Additionally, data was presented on the analysis of Vitamin E and Potassium content in the samples. There are currently existing EFSA health claims for these compounds and many tomato products qualify to use them.
 
Tomato Foundation founder, David Sutherland, presented the plan for the next steps in the research. The aim is to immediately begin preparing scientific papers for publication in peer-reviewed journals and to use the article abstracts to initiate a communications campaign. Also, to prepare funding applications for EU funding streams to advance the clinical trials necessary to continue the Foundation’s Health Claim project, to successfully gain a health claim for improved blood flow.
 
Mr. Sutherland illustrated the benefit to the tomato industry really lies in providing a benefit to consumers first in the form of reliable, independent research on topics directly relevant to consumers’ lives.
 
He went on to outline a plan for the Foundation to provide the processing tomato industry with a document that explains the regulations for use of the EFSA health claims for Vitamin E and Potassium and how they relate to some other territories for labelling information and possible wording. This will be ready by April.
 
Presenting the short-term plan for this year, Mr. Sutherland thanked current partners and appealed to the industry globally for continued economic support of the Foundation to progress the work and build on previous successes. 
 
For anyone who was unable to attend the webinar, a video recording is available here

Source: The Tomato Foundation