At Ohio State University's laboratories in Columbus, researchers have been cultivating a simple idea with compound promise: what if a glass of juice could help silence the chronic inflammation that fuels obesity and other stubborn diseases?
A new study published in Molecular Nutrition & Food Research suggests that answer may be yes. After just four weeks of daily consumption, a specially formulated tomato-soy juice significantly reduced pro-inflammatory proteins in the bloodstreams of healthy adults with obesity—offering fresh evidence that food, thoughtfully engineered, can be medicine.
The juice is no accident of nature. David Francis, an Ohio State expert in tomato breeding and genetics, developed the high-lycopene tomatoes that form its base. These tomatoes are enriched with lycopene, the carotenoid that gives tomatoes their red color and believed to possess antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. The juice is further fortified with soy isoflavones, plant-derived compounds from soybeans that mimic the hormone estrogen and are similarly thought to combat inflammation. Neither ingredient is new to science—researchers had already observed that diets high in tomato products or soy were associated with lower risks of prostate cancer. But this was among the first rigorous tests of what happens when you concentrate both compounds into a single functional food and measure their effects on systemic inflammation in human subjects.
The study design was elegantly simple. Twelve healthy adults with obesity drank two 6-ounce cans of the tomato-soy juice daily for four weeks. After a washout period, the same group consumed a control tomato juice stripped of the beneficial compounds. Researchers took blood samples before and after each trial period, measuring cytokines—pro-inflammatory proteins produced by the immune system that, when elevated, signal chronic inflammation.
The results were striking. Only the tomato-soy juice produced significant reductions in three key inflammatory markers: Interleukin-5 (IL-5), IL-12p70, and granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF). The juice also showed a downward trend in tumor necrosis factor alpha, though that decline did not reach statistical significance. The control juice, despite being tomato-based, produced no such effect. This distinction matters enormously. "Can we use food-based interventions to modulate inflammation?" asked Jessica Cooperstone, the study's lead author and associate professor of horticulture and crop science at Ohio State. "And can we test this in a rigorous way so that we can really see this is affecting inflammation, versus just saying something is anti-inflammatory?" Her team's answer, based on the data, appears to be yes on both counts.
The researchers also analyzed participants' urine for metabolites—the molecular byproducts of how the body breaks down nutrients—finding that soy isoflavone metabolite shifts stood out as distinctive markers of the juice's biological activity. This additional evidence suggests the intervention is genuinely altering human physiology, not merely pleasing the palate.
The implications extend beyond obesity. Cooperstone and colleagues have begun a pilot clinical trial testing whether the same juice reduces inflammation in patients with pancreatitis, a painful inflammatory condition of the pancreas. If those results prove as promising, a humble beverage born in a university greenhouse could open new possibilities for managing diseases that too often go untreated or undertreated because medications carry unwanted side effects.