High Fruit and Vegetable Consumption and Moderate Fat Intake Are Associated with Higher Carotenoid Concentration in Human Plasma

Carotenoids are pigments contained mainly in fruit and vegetables (F&V) that have bene-ficial effects on cardiometabolic health. Due to their lipophilic nature, co-ingestion of fat appears toincrease their bioavailability via facilitating transfer to the aqueous micellar phase during diges-tion. However, the extent to which high fat intake may contribute to increased carotenoid plasmaconcentrations is still unclear. The objective was to examine the degree to which the consumptionof different amounts of both carotenoid-rich foods and fats is associated with plasma carotenoidconcentrations within a Mediterranean lifestyle context (subsample from the PREDIMED-Plusstudy baseline) where consumption of F&V and fat is high. The study population was catego-rized into four groups according to their self-reported consumption of F&V and fat. Carotenoidswere extracted from plasma samples and analyzed by HPLC-UV-VIS-QqQ-MS/MS. Carotenoidsystemic concentrations were greater in high consumers of F&V than in low consumers of thesefoods (+3.04μmol/L (95% CI: 0.90, 5.17),p-value = 0.005), but circulating concentrations seemed todecrease when total fat intake was very high (−2.69μmol/L (−5.54; 0.16),p-value = 0.064). Highconsumption of F&V is associated with greater systemic levels of total carotenoids, in particularwhen fat intake is low-to-moderate rather than very high.