HEALTH AND FOOD: CULTIVATING A TASTE FOR LIFE

Posted by admin on April 23, 2009 under General health | Be the First to Comment

Doctors tracked 11,000 health-conscious people for 17 years, watching, you might say, every bite they put into their mouths.

These researchers at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in Oxford, England, and the Department of Public Health and Policy in London and the University of Wales in Cardiff recorded each person’s diet, illnesses, and deaths, when they occurred over the 17 years.

Two groups of people turned out to be the healthiest-that is, they had the lowest rates of debilitating diseases and were the least likely to die young. The winners were the apple-a-day folks-those who ate some fruit daily-and the garden-grazers-those who ate fresh salad daily. Salad-eating in particular was linked to a 26 percent lower rate of death from heart disease.

While this study was conducted in Great Britain, its findings apply to those of us here in the colonies as well. Want to spend more time on the planet? Then spend more time thinking about what you put on your plate.

Take control

We have more control over the grub we grab than about any other aspect of our lives. How we stuff our faces controls, to a great extent, the quality of our lives. It significantly influences our health, vitality, and longevity, notes Carla Wolper, R.D., a nutritionist at the Obesity Research Center at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital and the Center for Women’s Health at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital, both in

New York City. Every cell in our bodies depends upon the proper supply of nutrients. We get our nutrients from the foods we eat.

Of course, you already know that. You know that you should eat right.

You know that experts recommend eating from five to nine servings a day of fruits and vegetables. But we know that if you’re a typical guy, you aren’t getting five to nine servings a day of fruits and vegetables.

We’re not here to yell at you about that (well, not too much, anyway). But we would like to reason with you or, at least, to give you some reasons to make sure that you’re eating a balanced diet-one that includes plenty of fruits and vegetables.

For starters, the doctors and scientists we spoke with emphasized over and over that plant life contains a whole arsenal of goodies that are known, without a doubt, to guard against all sorts of nasties – from premature aging to cancer. Among the most powerful weapons are:

• Plant pigments: The stuff that causes plants to have color turns out to be chock-full of a veritable rainbow of beneficial vitamins and enzymes that our bodies crave.

• Phytochemicals: These chemicals act as a plant’s natural defense system-its natural pesticides and disease-fighters. Some of these chemicals help us ward off the scourges that attack us, too.

• Plant estrogens: These are plant hormones, sometimes referred to as phytogens that seem to enhance and balance hormonal activity in our own bodies. Estrogen? you ask. Aren’t we getting a bit girlish here? Not really. See, we need some of these so-called female hormones to cool down some of the male hormones-like the one that causes prostate cancer, for instance.

• Flavonoids: The tasty stuff that gives fruits and vegetables their flavors turns out to be medicine in our bodies.

Then there’s the other stuff, like the assorted enzymes, vitamins, minerals, and fibers that we get from regularly eating a wholesome variety of vegetables and fruits. Many of these plant constituents act as antioxidants. That is, they help protect our cells from getting burned and deteriorated from too much oxygen and other destructive atoms showing up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Antioxidants slow the aging and dying process at the cellular level.

While it is certain that the healing compounds in plants work together when we eat a variety of them, often it is less clear how well they work alone. The research is still young. So the recommendation for now, Wolper says, is to mix it up. Go for variety. Still, there are at least a few super-foods for which the evidence is so strong that it would be foolish to ignore.