Americans Are Putting More Additives—And Calories—In Their Coffee

Coffee with milk Credit: Alonso Nichols/Tufts University

October 20, 2026

By Eurasia Review

Key Takeaways:

A Tufts University analysis of NHANES data from 30,000 U.S. adults found that total coffee intake remained stable at roughly 13 ounces per day between 2003 and 2018, while calories from coffee rose from 43 kcal/day to 60 kcal/day.

By 2018, non-dairy creamer contributed the most calories (18.5 kcal/day), surpassing sugar (16 kcal/day) and dairy milk (11 kcal/day), as consumption of non-dairy additions increased from 3.65 g/day to 10.5 g/day.

The researchers note that non-dairy creamers can be high in saturated fat and that self-reported dietary data carry measurement limitations, while linking higher coffee intake to shorter sleep or longer working hours.

While Americans have been drinking roughly the same amount of coffee over recent years, the calories in those cups have increased thanks primarily to the addition of non-dairy creamer, according to a new study from researchers at the Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University.

The study, published online in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, analyzed the reported dietary intake of 30,000 U.S. adults aged 20 and over and found that between 2003 and 2018, the consumption of total coffee remained stable (roughly 13 ounces/day), but the energy, or calories, consumed increased from 43 kcal/day to 60 kcal/day. The most common coffee additions by calories in 2018 were non-dairy creamer, sugar or syrup, and dairy milk.

“Coffee consumption has been associated with several health benefits. However, coffee is often accompanied by the addition of sugar and cream, which can contribute to an increased consumption of calories from added sugar and saturated fat,” said Fang Fang Zhang, senior author of the study and Neely Family Professor at the Friedman School. “The more we know about what people are consuming, the better we can understand the link between nutrition and overall health.”


The study analyzed data from eight consecutive cycles of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) from 2003 to 2018. The study included a nationally representative sample of 30,000 adults aged 20 years and older who provided two 24-hour diet recalls. Coffee-containing beverages were divided into two categories: non-combination beverages and beverages with additions. The coffee additions were further classified as dairy milk, half-and-half, dairy cream, non-dairy milk, non-dairy creamer, sugar/syrup, sugar substitute, and other coffee additions, such as alcohol and cocoa powder. To determine the amount of coffee additions in pre-mixed coffee beverages/powder reported in diet recalls, the cycle-specific USDA Food and Nutrition Database for Dietary Studies and the linked Standard Reference codes were used.

The researchers found that consumption of total coffee and coffee without additions remained stable among U.S. adults from 2003 to 2018. For coffee additions, the most common by weight in 2018 were dairy milk (21.4 grams/day), non-dairy creamer (8.1 g/day), and sugar (4.4 g/day), with no significant changes in consumption of dairy milk and sugar/sugar substitutes since 2003. Consumption of non-dairy additions increased during the window studied, from a mean of 3.65 g/day to 10.5 g/day. Within the options for non-dairy additions, non-dairy creamer (from 3.37 g/day to 8 g/day) and non-dairy milk (from 0.27 g/day to 2.45 g/day) increased the most. There was also a small increase in the consumption of other coffee additions, with a mean increase of .5 g/day.


In terms of estimated calories added to a cup of joe, by 2018 non-dairy creamer added the largest amount (18.5 kcal/day), followed by sugar (16 kcal/day) and dairy milk (11 kcal/day). In 2003, mean caloric intake from non-dairy creamer was 7.71 kcal/day.

“We found that non-dairy creamer being added to coffee has now passed both sugar and dairy for its contribution to the total energy consumed from coffee. Non-dairy creamers can be high in saturated fat, which is calorie dense. This could explain the increased calories that non-dairy creamer is contributing,” said Yongyi Pan, the study’s lead author and a Ph.D. candidate at the Friedman School. “Even though it has been on the market since the 1950s, non-dairy creamer has increased in popularity in recent years as consumers seek plant-based or dairy alternatives.”

At the population level, the researchers found that adults with fewer hours of sleep or longer working hours consumed more coffee than those with more sleep or shorter working hours. Coffee consumption was similar among individuals with high versus low diet quality.

The authors note as a limitation that self-reported recall data is subject to measurement error due to day-to-day variations in food intake, but steps were taken to improve estimates.

After Two Botched Attempts, UN Experts Urge Tennessee Not to Try to Execute Christa Pike Again

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk also argued that “the death penalty has no place in any society.”


Christa Pike survived two botched execution attempts in Nashville, Tennessee on September 30, 2026.
(Photo via Cornell Law School)

Jessica Corbett
Oct 01, 2026

COMMON DREAMS

United Nations human rights experts on Thursday joined the growing chorus of people around the world outraged by Tennessee’s two botched attempts to execute Christa Pike and called on the state to refrain from trying again to kill the 50-year-old woman.

After a last-minute legal battle, the US Supreme Court allowed Tennessee to execute Pike for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer. The state tried to do so at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville on Wednesday night—with two injections of pentobarbital, each of which was supposed to be lethal—but she survived and was transported by ambulance to a hospital.



‘Inhumane, Barbaric, Torturous’: Christa Pike Survives Twice-Botched Execution in Tennessee



A doctor interviewed by WSMV 4 Nashville’s Steve Mehling suggested that an IV could have been placed incorrectly—and, as the journalist summarized: “Pike may suffer from a flurry of long-term effects. This includes skin necrosis, permanent scarring, functional impairment, compartment syndrome, chronic neuropathic pain, and pigmentation change at the injection site.”

As of Thursday afternoon, Pike’s attorneys said that she was still alive, but in critical condition, “and receiving lifesaving medical care,” according to The Washington Post. Republican Gov. Bill Lee, who had previously declined to grant clemency in this case, has since halted executions in Tennessee and ordered an investigation into the state’s second botched killing of an inmate this year.

Several UN special rapporteurs and members of the Working Group on Discrimination Against Women and Girls had urged US authorities to commute Pike’s sentence last month, saying that her “execution would mark the culmination of a trajectory of severe physical and psychological suffering marked by childhood abuse and nearly three decades of solitary confinement on death row.”

After Wednesday’s botched attempts, some of the same experts weighed in again: “Christa Pike was denied clemency. One hour before her execution, a court halted it. The Supreme Court then lifted the stay. She was injected twice with lethal drugs and survived. Forcing a person to face death, have it suspended, and then face it again within hours amounts to barbaric and torturous punishment, compounded in this case by decades of psychological torture on death row.”

“The state of Tennessee must immediately and irrevocably end this cruelty by commuting Christa Pike’s death sentence,” said Morris Tidball-Binz, special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions; Margaret Satterthwaite, special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers; Pau Pérez-Sales, special rapporteur on torture; Mariângela Batista Galvão Simão, special rapporteur on the right to health; Reem Alsalem, special rapporteur on violence against women and girls; and working group members Claudia Flores, Ivana Krstić, Dorothy Estrada-Tanck, and Haina Lu.




United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk went even further, arguing against capital punishment.

“The case of Christa Pike lays bare multiple reasons why the death penalty should be abolished,” said a statement from his office. “The prolonged suffering—physical and mental—arising from multiple failed execution attempts is abhorrent, and cruel. And there are key fair trial questions still unresolved.”

Türk is calling on “state authorities not to pursue any further attempt to execute Pike,” his office said. “We are also troubled by the increase in the number of executions in the United States. The death penalty has no place in any society.”

‘Inhumane, Barbaric, Torturous’: Christa Pike Survives Twice-Botched Execution in Tennessee

“This event is the worst we’ve seen and unlike any other botched execution in the modern era,” said Robin Maher, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. “There is no precedent.”


Abraham Bonowitz speaks during a March 4 Mercy protest against the death penalty at the Tennessee State Capitol in Nashville ahead of the Sept. 30 scheduled execution of Christa Pike.
(Photo: George Walker IV/AP Photo)

Jon Queally
Oct 01, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

The botched execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee on Wednesday night was met with disgust and outrage by death penalty opponents who have long argued that not only is murder by the state morally wrong, but the government’s inability to carry out such punishments humanely has been shown time and time again to result in horrific human rights violations and barbaric scenes of cruelty inside the nation’s prison walls.

Pike, sentenced to death in Tennessee over the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, survived two otherwise lethal injections of pentobarbital on Wednesday while strapped to a gurney by prison officials at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.

“Tonight the State of Tennessee once again failed to carry out a lawful execution,” said Pike’s attorneys—Randy Spivey and Kelly Gleason from the TN Office of the Post Conviction Defender, and Stephen Ferrell and Luke Ihnen from Federal Defender Services of Eastern Tennessee—in a statement late Wednesday.




“We take no pleasure in being right,” her lawyer’s continued, “but the concerns raised by Ms. Pike proved to be true: difficult vein access, blown veins, degraded pentobarbital, no emergency medical care available when things inevitably go wrong, all under a protocol that remains veiled in secrecy. Christa is being treated at a nearby hospital. We have not been informed as to her condition.”

Pike’s legal team said she remained alive after two rounds of the lethal injection, with witnesses reporting confusion after the first dose resulted in Pike raising her head to speak to those who administered the drug and falling into a deep sleep, but audibly snoring and still alive, after the second.

“This event is the worst we’ve seen and unlike any other botched execution in the modern era,” said Robin Maher, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. “There is no precedent.”

It was the second botched execution in Tennessee this year, reports The New York Times. According to the newspaper:
The apparent failure came after dueling court rulings delayed the execution of [Pike] by about nine hours. The state had raced to go ahead with the execution before the day ended and to avoid having to reschedule.

In a pair of emergency legal filings, Ms. Pike’s lawyers said that while two syringes of pentobarbital, the lethal drug, had been administered, Ms. Pike had not lost consciousness. She still had a heartbeat, they said, and was audibly snoring.

The execution of Pike, who court records show was subject to pervasive abuse throughout her childhood and was only 18 years old when she carried out the brutal crime, had been put on hold earlier Wednesday only to be reinstated by the US Supreme Court later in the day.

Amnesty International USA condemned the treatment of Pike and called for an end to all capital punishment in the United States.

“Tennessee’s botched attempt to execute Christa Pike, as witnessed by her attorneys, demonstrates why the death penalty truly is the ultimate cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment,” the group said. “All execution methods are inhumane and unacceptable. The death penalty must be abolished, everywhere.”

Republican Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee announced after the botched execution that the state’s other remaining execution for 2026 would be put on hold and ordered “a comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred” in the attempted killing of Pike.


Pike, said human rights advocate Evad HaAm, “survived a completed lethal-injection attempt. That is not a stay. It is a botched execution.”

While Pike’s current medical status and chance for survival remain unknown, further attempts by the state to kill her, he argued, “would violate the Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.”

Federal Appellate Court Halts Tennessee’s Planned Execution of Christa Pike

“So much of Ms. Pike’s experience reflects widespread and systemic failures that surface in death penalty cases,” said an Amnesty International USA researcher, urging an end to capital punishment “in Tennessee and beyond.”

A panel from the US Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit halted Tennessee’s planned execution of Christa Pike on September 30, 2026.
(Photo via Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty)

Jessica Corbett
Sep 30, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

A federal appellate court on Wednesday morning temporarily blocked Tennessee from executing Christa Pike, as witnesses had already gathered at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville for the state’s first execution of a woman in centuries.

A panel from the US Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled 2-1 to halt the state-sanctioned killing, after Republican Gov. Bill Lee and the US Supreme Court declined to do so. The 50-year-old, found guilty of murdering Colleen Slemmer in 1995, when Pike was 18, could still be executed on Wednesday if the nation’s top court allows it.

Republican state Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti’s office said: “We will continue to advocate for the lawfully imposed sentence as the courts work through this technical issue. It is common in capital cases for the defense to raise last-minute objections following decades of litigation in numerous courts. We are asking the Supreme Court of the United States to lift the stay.”

Judges Jane Stranch and Karen Moore, both appointees of Democratic presidents, concluded early Wednesday that “a short stay of execution” is in order due to arguments related to the sexual abuse Pike suffered as a child—which clinical psychologist Dr. Bethany Brand described as “truly extreme,” writing in 2023 that “the level of trauma she was subjected to as a preschooler through her 18th year, when she was arrested, is almost impossible to grasp because it is so severe.”

As the 6th Circuit’s order details, Pike points out “that the state recently reversed its litigation position that she is a liar who fabricated sexual abuse. Pike contends that the state’s concession of her history of child sexual abuse and rape ‘erodes the foundation’ of her state court proceedings. Pike ties this erosion to defects in the federal court proceedings because... the district court was required to give strong deference to the state court’s findings of facts.”

“Pike also cites scholarly authority supporting her argument that the state’s representations about her history of sexual abuse tainted the state court proceedings and the subsequent federal ones by introducing damaging stereotypes of survivors of sexual assault,” the filing says.



Pike was “subjected to drugs and alcohol while she was still in her mother’s womb” and “first sexually abused by her grandmother’s boyfriend, who would orally rape her before she was in kindergarten,” the Nashville Banner’s Steven Hale recently reported, citing Brand’s findings. “After living through periods of physical and emotional torment by extended family members and one of her mother’s husbands, Pike was later raped by a known predatory neighbor.”

“She was hospitalized at the age of 12 after overdosing on pills during a suicide attempt,” then sexually assaulted by one of her mother’s boyfriends, who had “moved into the family’s home and brought with him violence and depravity,” Hale continued, noting that the perpetrators who abused Pike often faced limited consequences. “When she was 17 in January 1994, Pike was sexually assaulted again, by a man who saw her walking to the store in Carrboro, North Carolina.”

Hale was among the journalists at the prison in Nashville on Wednesday morning. He said on social media that “I’m told the state has until midnight to carry out the execution. Still unclear what happens next, but prison officials are bringing those of us witnessing the execution inside now to be ready.”

The journalist added just after noon Central Time that “prison officials have brought us back outside now while we continue to wait for news from the Supreme Court.”



Following the 6th Circuit’s decision, the ACLU—whose Capital Punishment Project works to repeal the death penalty in the United States—took to social media, urging the public to “tell Gov. Lee to respect the court’s decision and call off her execution NOW.”

“Gov. Lee’s 615-741-2001 mailbox is full—contacting him through this form is the quickest way to reach his office,” the legal group explained, sharing a link to the relevant page on the state government’s website.

Lee had said Monday that “after deliberate consideration of Christa Gail Pike’s request for clemency, and after a thorough review of the case, I am upholding the sentence of the state of Tennessee and do not plan to intervene.”

Attorneys for Pike—Stephen Ferrell, Kelly Gleason, and Randy Spivey—responded that they were “deeply saddened and heartbroken by Gov. Lee’s decision to deny clemency,” emphasizing that “throughout her childhood, Christa was failed by people and institutions that should have shown her care and meaningful intervention.”

“The 18-year-old girl suffering from severe mental illness and near-debilitating trauma no longer exists,” the lawyers said. “Christa is a 50-year-old remorseful woman who understands her actions, receives proper treatment for her mental illness, and provides for and guides fellow incarcerated women.”

“With this decision, the state of Tennessee is ignoring what both science and our legal system have decided: An 18-year-old brain is not an adult brain, and 18 is too young to face execution. This decision also leaves unanswered vital questions about Tennessee’s execution protocol,” they added. “We will continue to support Christa through every remaining avenue and advocate for a system that is transparent for the people of Tennessee.”



Among the organizations that have pressured Lee to block the execution is Amnesty International USA, whose deputy director of research, Justin Mazzola, recently said that “so much of Ms. Pike’s experience reflects widespread and systemic failures that surface in death penalty cases.”

“She endured profound abuse and trauma as a child and had serious mental disabilities that were never adequately addressed nor treated,” he highlighted. “Due to inadequate legal representation, these issues were not fully presented to the jury. Knowing all that, it is unthinkable that Gov. Lee would even consider moving forward with this execution.”

Mazzola—whose group opposes capital punishment under all circumstances—also stressed that “this issue is about more than one person. Amnesty International members are speaking out because the use of the death penalty remains a human rights failure. As its use continues to decline globally, the United States remains an outlier. It is well past time to abolish the death penalty once and for all, in Tennessee and beyond.”

The US National Domestic Violence Hotline can be reached at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233), by texting “START” to 88788, or through chat at thehotline.org. RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline can be reached at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or by texting “HOPE” to 64673. Both offer 24/7, free, and confidential support. DomesticShelters.org has a list of global and national resources.

Sweet-stealing capitalists and the definition of kissing: The 2026 Ig Nobel award winners

Copyright Eric Workman/Improbable Research - Canva

By David Mouriquand

Published on 04/09/2026 - EURONEWS

The annual awards highlight strange, funny and thought-provoking research. This year's ceremony took place in Europe, with “fungi” as the theme of the 36th edition.

Nobel prize winners get prestige, a gold medal, and a little over a million dollars. Ig Nobel prize winners don’t get such sublime considerations.

They do get acclaim, but instead of all the Nobel perks, they are instead showered with paper planes and 10 trillion Zimbabwean dollars.

The snag is that the currency cratered years ago, so 10 trillion Zimbabwean dollars is worth next to nothing. Still, last year’s winners went home with a single packaged moist towelette, so swings and roundabouts... Plus, this year's winners were given a statuette representing a slab of blue cheese trampled on by a foot erupting with toadstools in honour of this year's “fungi” theme. What's not to love?

Established in 1991 as a satirical version of the Nobel prize, the Ig Nobels aim to promote public engagement with scientific (and culturally resonant) research, honouring “achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think".

This year’s Igs were awarded yesterday at a ceremony in Zurich, Switzerland – a first, as the award ceremony is usually held in the US. The reason, the organisers say, comes down to the hostile climate in the US toward science, as well as international travellers being increasingly reluctant to travel Stateside.

A perfectly ordinary and not at all alarming English sentence.

“During the past year, it has become unsafe for our guests to visit the country,” Marc Abrahams, master of ceremonies and editor of The Annals of Improbable Research magazine, told AP. “We cannot in good conscience ask the new winners, or the international journalists who cover the event, to travel to the US this year.”

Back to this year's research and winners, who have discovered that the upper classes are more prone to behaving badly, that kissing can be redefined and cockroaches will inherit the Earth in more ways that one.

Here's a look at some of this year’s winners:

Biomechanics: Evolutionary smooching

Evolutionary smooching Canva

Winners: Matilda Brindle, Catherine Talbot, Stuart West (UK, USA).

Rationale: "Devising a more precise definition of kissing – non-agonistic interactions involving directed, intraspecific, oral-oral contact with some movement of the lips/mouthparts and no food transfer" – in ants, polar bears, and humans.

Research: A comparative approach to the evolution of kissing. Dr Matilda Brindle and her colleagues developed a rigorous definition of kissing through the study of different species. They found that kissing occurs in most living large apes and likely in Neanderthals - arguing that early humans and Neanderthals may have even kissed one another. "Next time you kiss someone, you can think, 'This is a 21.5 million-year-old tradition that I'm honoring here,” said Dr Brindle. “It's not just a modern human behaviour. It's really ancestral. And to us, that suggests that it probably has quite a useful evolutionary function."

Economics: Rich people are the worst

Why would you? Canva

Winners: Paul Piff, Daniel Stancato, Stéphane Côté, Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, and Dacher Keltner (USA, Mexico, Canada)

Rationale: "Amassing evidence that upper-class people are more likely to snatch from a children's candy, and engage in other kinds of unethical behaviour."

Reasearch: Higher social class predicts increased unethical behaviour. The researchers amassed evidence through seven studies that prove rich people are just the worst. They’re more likely to take sweets from children, excel at lying when it comes to their scores during dice rolls, are more likely to cut other cars off at junctions, and view greed as a positive attribute. “The general pattern seems to be that with wealth and rising power, you become less engaged with the needs of others and less burdened by the needs of social relationships,” Piff said. “Taking candy from children might be the least of our worries but it’s emblematic of the tendency to prioritise one’s own needs over those of others.”

Turns out Dorothy Parker was right: “If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to."

Chemistry: Cockroach milk, anyone?

Got milk? Canva

Winners: Sanchari Banerjeee, Nathan Coussens, Francois-Xavier Gallat, Nitish Sathyanarayanan, Jandhyam Srikanth, Koichiro Yagi, James Gray, Steven Tobe, Barbara Stay, Leonard Chavas, Sumabramanian Ramaswamy (India, France, Japan, USA).

Rationale: "Discovering that milk proteins from vivaporous cockroaches contains three times as much energy as milk proteins than from cows."

Research: Structure of heterogeneous, glycosylated, lipid-bound, in vivo-grown protein crystal at atomic resolution from the viviparous cockroach Diploptera punctata. If that sentence just gave you a headache, it boils down to the authors extracting milk crystals from the guts of Diploptera punctata roach embryos harvested from a brood sac to determine the protein structure of the crystals. Essentially, cockroach milk is powerful.

Physics: The optimization of urination

No more splash back Canva

Winners: Randy Hurd, Zhao Pan, Tadd Truscott, Kaveeshan Thurairajah (Canada, USA, China, Saudi Arabia).

Rationale: "Theoretical and experimental attempts to design a splash-free urinal."

Research: Splash-free urinals for global sustainability and accessibility. A team of students at the University of Waterloo in Canada worked out that urinal splash is almost entirely eradicated if the stream strikes the urinal at less than 30 degrees. They even designed a urinal whose shape ensures minimal splash regardless of the user’s aim. “I am very proud,” said Dr Zhao Pan. So he should be.

Medecine: Thrusting mucus

The culture and science of blowing Canva

Winner: Takuji Unno (Japan).

Rationale: "How to Blow the Nose – An Aerodynamic Study of the Nose Blowing."

Research: Unno explored the cultural differences between Europeans and Japanese people when it comes to proper nose-blowing, quantifying the key aspects of the practice “to give good instructions to those who do not understand how to blow the nose.” He concluded that the faster the “expiratory thrust” of the blow, the more efficiently one can expel mucus. “A big and long nose blow is therefore recommended to prevent upper and lower respiratory tract diseases.”

Peace: The benefits of vicious friends

The benefits of vicious friends Canva

Winners: Jaimie Arona Krems, Rebecka Hahnel-Peeters, Laureon Merrie, Keelah Williams, and Daniel Sznycer (USA, Argentina, Australia).

Rationale: "We value friends who are vicious to people we dislike."

Research: People have nuanced preferences for how they want their friends to behave toward them versus others. No one likes a friend who treats them poorly; but in a broader social context, the authors explored how dynamics shift when it comes to how people want their friends to behave toward their enemies. In those cases, some prefer their friends to be more vicious toward those people. “Sometimes we want our friends to be more vicious and indifferent when they interact with our enemies,” said Dr Jaimie Krems. “I’ve felt, in many instances, incredibly loved when people have carried my hate for me and been willing to have my back.”

Olfaction: Smelly children

Damn hormones Canva

Winners: Ilona Croy, Tomasz Frackowiak, Thomas Hummel, and Agnieszka Sorokowska (Poland, Germany, Sweden).

Rationale: "Collecting evidence that babies smell wonderful to their parents but teenagers do not."

Research: "Babies Smell Wonderful to Their Parents, Teenagers Do Not: an Exploratory Questionnaire Study on Children’s Age and Personal Odor Ratings in a Polish Sample." Conclusion: Parents usually find their babies’ body odour very pleasant, as it activates reward centers in the brain. However, once puberty hits, it’s a different matter. Bloody hormones.

Elsewhere, other researchers landed prizes for turning mosquito proboscises into 3D printing nozzles, burying cotton underwear to monitor soil quality, and gently stepping on various parts of snakes to try to learn what induces a venomous snake to bite a human. They're more likely to bite during the day, in warmer climates, and if you trample their head. And before you ask, yes, they wore safety boots.

Next year’s Ig Nobel ceremony will be held in Antwerp, Flanders.

Additional sources 

 

Move over, lycopene. Tomatoes’ secret sauce may be phytoene

New study suggests a lesser-known compound in tomatoes may help protect against fatty liver disease, which affects more than 1 in 3 American adults

Tufts University

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Phytoene is not only abundant in yellow, orange, and red tomatoes, but also exists in many common fruits and vegetables, including carrots, red peppers, pink grapefruit, watermelon, and apricots.

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Credit: Alonso Nichols/Tufts University

For decades, the red pigment lycopene has been considered the tomato’s star nutrient. But new research from Tufts University suggests that phytoene, a colorless precursor of lycopene, may also contribute to tomatoes’ protective effects against a form of chronic fatty liver disease affecting up to 38% of U.S. adults.

The study, published in Molecular Nutrition & Food Science, found that mice given phytoene developed substantially less fatty liver disease than mice fed the same unhealthy diet without the compound. Although it is not visible in ripe red tomatoes, phytoene is a natural building block that plants convert into lycopene and other carotenoids—the red, yellow, and orange pigments that give many fruits and vegetables their vibrant colors.

As many as 100 million adults in the United States—and up to 75% of Americans with obesity or diabetes—are estimated to have metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease. In this condition, too much fat builds up in liver cells. Over time, this excessive fat accumulation can cause liver inflammation and damage that, in more advanced cases, leads to scarring of the liver called cirrhosis.

Scientists have known for years that tomatoes may help protect the liver. Yet tomato powder has outperformed purified lycopene in protecting the liver in animal studies, suggesting that other compounds in tomatoes may also contribute to these beneficial effects.

“Both lycopene and phytoene are found in substantial amounts in tomatoes and tomato products,” said Na Youn Lee, the study’s lead author and a Ph.D. candidate at the Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. “But we know from previous research that phytoene is actually more readily absorbed by the body.”

For the new study, the researchers fed two groups of mice a high-refined-carbohydrate diet for six months to mimic dietary patterns associated with fatty liver disease in humans, including high consumption of sugary foods and beverages. Half of the mice also received phytoene supplementation at a dose equivalent to a person eating about three to four medium-sized raw tomatoes or 100 grams of tomato paste—or a little more than a third of a cup—per day.

The team then compared liver health, metabolism, and gut bacteria in the mice that received phytoene with those that did not. The scientists also examined differences between male and female mice, as well as between normal mice and mice lacking two enzymes involved in converting carotenoids into biologically active metabolites.

The mice given phytoene developed much less severe fatty liver disease than those that did not receive the supplement. Rather than working by altering the gut microbiome, phytoene appeared to activate several key proteins involved in regulating liver metabolism, helping the liver burn excess fat for energy rather than allowing it to accumulate.

Mice that lacked the enzymes needed to metabolize phytoene accumulated much higher levels of the compound in their bodies but did not receive the same protection against fatty liver disease. This finding suggests that the liver-protective effects may come from smaller compounds produced when the body breaks down phytoene. Because people can have genetic differences in the enzymes that metabolize phytoene, more research is needed to identify these metabolites and determine whether some individuals may benefit more from phytoene than others.

The study also found that females accumulated more phytoene in the liver than males, suggesting that sex may influence how the body absorbs or metabolizes the compound. The authors noted that future studies could explore whether these differences affect phytoene’s ability to protect against fatty liver disease.

“Our findings have broad implications, as phytoene is not only abundant in yellow, orange, and red tomatoes, but also exists in many common fruits and vegetables, including carrots, red peppers, pink grapefruit, watermelon, and apricots,” said Xiang-Dong Wang, the study’s senior author and a senior scientist at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University. “Should further research validate our findings, encouraging people to eat more phytoene-rich fruits and vegetables could be a useful strategy to help prevent metabolic liver disease or slow its progression in high-risk individuals.”

Additional authors are Jennifer Lee, Nirupa Matthan, and Stefania Lamon-Fava, all of the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging. Research reported in this article was supported by a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service and an award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Complete information on the methodology and conflicts of interest is available in the published paper. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

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Journal

Molecular Nutrition & Food Research

DOI

10.1002/mnfr.70596 

Article Title

Phytoene, a Precursor of Lycopene in Tomatoes, Protects Against Metabolic Dysfunction-Associated Steatotic Liver Disease in Mice

Article Publication Date

23-Aug-2026