The University of Manchester's department of photo- dermatology - no, I don't know what that is either - has discovered that lycopene, the miracle chemical that appears when tomatoes are cooked and compressed into a paste, has sun-screening properties.

That's going to revolutionise sunbathing. Row upon row of sun loungers on the beach at Benidorm, complete with fluffy towel, chick-lit paperback and economy-size squeezy tube of tomato purée. Actually you aren't supposed to rub it on, but it might be just as effective if you did. The upshot was that eating a tube of tomato purée a day was equivalent to using a sun block with a sun protection factor of about 1.3. Even the most optimistic doctors reckon that SPF15 should be your minimum.

If you want to give it a shot this summer, remember that an average pizza has about a quarter of a tube of tomato paste spread over the base. So you'll need to have one for breakfast, one for lunch, another at dinner time and then squeeze in a spicy seven-incher on the way back to your hotel from the nightclub district.

Let's get one thing clear, I have nothing against dermatologists. But I have to ask, what possible motive could they have for promoting pizza as a health food?

When you get home from your four-portions-a-day pizzathon with a face that looks like a Quattro Stagione with extra mozzarella balls, who are you going to call? Your GP for an urgent referral letter to a private skin specialist to get your hands on some expensive acne treatment, that's who. This is the part of the show where I usually go on to rubbish the research findings, but as they've already confessed that they studied only ten volunteers they've saved me the trouble. They admit that further investigation is needed.

I'd help out myself if only I could think of a group of people who appear to survive on nothing but takeaway pizza and who wouldn't spoil the results of the experiment by buying any fresh fruit or vegetables. Ideally, they'd be people who lived conveniently close to my surgery. But it will be impossible for me to do that while I'm trying to concentrate on the dietitian's appointment list for this afternoon, so I'll get around to it later.

Even if confectioners can't claim that a Mars a day “helps you work, rest and play” any more, I reckon that it's possible to spin anything to make it sound healthy. Take this tomato, parma ham and mozzarella pizza, for example. The base is made of flour, milk and butter. Everyone knows that milk is a good source of dietary calcium, but it's also said to lower blood pressure, protect against colon cancer, prevent kidney stones and is a rich source of vitamin B2. Flour is an excellent provider of essential trace elements, such as magnesium and selenium, along with vitamin B3. The high saturated fat content of the butter is essential to promote the incorporation of dietary calcium into bone and help prevent fractures.

Not only does the tomato purée act as a sunscreen, it also protects against prostate cancer, just like the cherry tomatoes in the topping. The garlic prevents cold sores and is said to protect against heart disease. And the mozzarella is calcium-rich. This isn't food, it's a first-aid kit in a handy keep-warm box.

All I have to do now is to choose from this range of healthy-option desserts: the freshly baked cherry pie (the sour varieties used in pie fillings contain pigments that lower cholesterol); the pistachio nut ice-cream (two handfuls of pistachios a day help to prevent heart disease); or the flavonoid-rich dark chocolate mousse to keep my coronary arteries in tip-top condition?

It's just a shame that so-called superfoods are nowhere near as effective as real medicines. Statins, aspirin and sunscreens are always going to win out; they just don't taste half as good.

Dr Copperfield is a GP in Essex. He also writes for Pulse magazine and Pulsetoday.co.uk

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