Description: EATING tomato sauce every day can significantly help your heart, according to new research.

Tests show the popular sauce could be good for the heart by attacking 'bad' cholesterol, known as low-density lipoprotein.

Volunteers who added a few dollops of ketchup to their breakfast, lunch and tea, or drank a few glasses of tomato juice, saw their LDL levels drop significantly in the space of just three weeks.

Researchers from Finland who conducted the study at the University of Oulo in Finland said total cholesterol levels dropped by just under six per cent and LDL levels by almost 13 per cent.

They urged patients with high cholesterol to start eating ketchup or drinking tomato juice to help reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

In a report on the findings, published in the British Journal of Nutrition, they said: "The changes we saw can be regarded as significant, considering that the time period was only three weeks and all the volunteers had normal cholestero