Foods That Help You Live Longer ~ Bloggerin Info

Dr. Gary Fraser, an epidemiologist specializing in cardiovascular diseases, has taken to scattering nuts on his breakfast cereal. At the Loma Linda University Center for health Research near Los Angeles, California, Fraser and colleagues studied the eating habits of 26,500 Seven-day Adventists, members of a religious denomination whose adherents neither smoke nor drik and are mostly vegetarians. They discovered that those who munched a small and full of nuts five times or more each week had half the coronary-heart-disease risk of those who rarely ate nuts.

NUTS, preferably unsalted, wether roasted or raw, are a fine source of good monounsaturated and polyunsaturated and polyunsaterated fats and of vitamin E," says Fraser. They also contain magnesium, which can help prevent heart arrhythmias.

Welcome to the frontier of food science, where researchers are uncovering the disease-fighting and life-enhacing powers of everyday edibles. While some confine their studies to the laboratory, others investigate how foods of different cultures may be linked to low rates of cancer and heart disease. Their findings could add years to your life and make your palate more international.

The Mediterranean Connection

People who live in the countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea have, in general, impressive health and longevity. Some features of their cuisine--the reliance of fresh fruits, vegetables and whole grains, for instance---fit current concepts of a healthful diet. But other features don't. For example, scientists have been puzzled by a health mystery popularly known as the "French paradox." The French consume at least as much saturated fat as Americans--yet the death rate from heart disease for Frenchman is only about 40 percent of that for American men.

Garlic and Onions

Some researchers attribute this protection from heart disease largely to the consumption of wine. In southwestern France, the average man drinks two to three glasses of wine, mostly red, every day with meals.

Cardiologist Dr. Arthur Klastky has reported that light to moderate drinkers of alcohol beverages (no more than two drinks a day) have significantly lower rates of coronary artery disease. "Alcohol itself seems to be the cause of this protective effect," says Klatsky.

But it may be the nonalcoholic chemicals in wine also provide a health benefit. At cornell University in Ithaca, New York, Leroy Creasy, a specialist in the science of fruit cultivation, has been studying a substance produced by grapes to fight fungi. Called resveratrol, it is a natural pesticide that has been found in Japanese animal studies to reduce fat and cholesterol levels in the blood.

Other good sources of resveratrol are red or purple grape juice and raisins that artificially dried. "Sunlight can destroy this chemical," says Creasy, "so look for raisins that are not sun-dried."

Red wine also contains quercetin, which has displayed cancer-fighting properties in laboratory animals. According to biochemist Terrance Leighton, high levels of this chemical are found in red grapes, red and yellow onions, brocolli and yellow squash. It seems that quercetin is inert until acted on by bacteria in the digestive system or by yeast in wine fermenting vat, Leighton explains. It then turns into what may be one of nature's more potent anti-carcinogens.

When many people think of Mediterranean cuisine, they immediately picture garlic and onions. Modern science is finding surprising medicinal powers in these related bulbs, which contain many organic sulfur compounds.

In a test tube these sulfur compounds kill bacteria, fungi and viruses. Inside the body, aged garlic extract appears to slow blood coagulation time, which could reduce the risk of clots and heart diseases. Garlic's blood-thinning properties may be similar to those of aspirin. The Journal of the American Medical Association reported findings from an Indian study that six to ten grams of garlic given daily to 222 patients with histories of heart attacks "reduced the mortality and incidence of nonfatal reinfactions." (Patients taking blood thinners should check with their doctor before using garlic supplements.)

Several epidemiological studies in China have pointed to reduced stomach cancer risk in those eating diets rich in vegetables of he onion family. These include chives, shallots and leeks.

Oriental Wisdom

New scientific evidence from animal studies may someday make the green tea enjoyed in Japan a popular pickme-up elsewhere. When researchers at Rutgers University in New Jersey feed green tea to mice, skin cancers in the rodents (caused by ultraviolet light) were reduced by about 50 percent.

FUNG LUNG CHUNG, associated chief of the Division of Chemical Carcionogenesis at the American Health Foundation in Valhalla, New York, has been studying a chemical contained in green tea called epigalocatechin gallate (EGCG). Chung's group has found that this powerful antioxidant protected mice against lung cancer.

"Japanesse men smoke twice as much as American men," says Chung. "Yet, they have only about half the lung-cancer mortality. Perhaps the fact that Japanese drink green tea daily helps explain why."

Soybeans have been a staple in Asia for thousands of years. In a 1982 study of over 250.000 Japanese, researcher Takeshi Hirayama of Japan's national Cancer Center Research Institute found that people who ate soybean-paste soup daily had a significantly lower risk of dying of gastric cancer than did those who rarely or never ate the soup. A naturally occuring compound in soybeans called genistein may block cancer-causing genes. Genistein is found in the soybean curd called tofu, as well as in soy milk, soy protein isolates and most soy flour.

Soy sauce is made with a process that eliminates the geinstein. However, according to microbiologist Michael Pariza, the principal flavor component of traditional (fermented) soy sauce---a substance called HEMF---is "one of the more powerful anti cancer agents studied in animals so far."

The Artic Diet

Scientist were puzzled when they started studying the health of Eskimos in Greenland. They consume vast quantities of fat yet have remarkably low death rates from heart disease. One reason is that the Eskimo diet includes abundant fish---salmon, mackerel, herring and others---rich in usual oils that scientists label omega-3 fatty acids. If consumed for a long period, these fish oils appear to thin blood, lower its cholesterol, reduce in flammatory reactions, lessen the risk of atherosclerosis and, according to recent animal research, may protect against colon cancer.

According to cell biologist Michael J. Wargovich, there is not yet reason for gastroenterologists to recommend that their patients gulp fish-oil capsules. "But the evidence is certainly strong enough," he says, "to recommend a diet that includes more cold-water fish."

Food of the 90's

Some vegetables are even healthier than we thought, such as broccoli and related cruciferous vegetables---cabbage, Brussels sprouts, watercress and others---so named because of the cross shaped arrangement of their flower petals. In March 1992 a team of scientists at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, announced that a sulfur-rich chemical in brocolli called suforaphane "may be a significant component of the anti-carcinogenic action of broccoli."

"In addition to sulforaphane, there are other reasons your mother was right to say, "Eat your brocolli," explains Dr. Jon Michnovicz, director of the Foundation for Preventive Oncology in New York City. "Cruciferous vegetables are bursting with chemicals called indoles that can block certain cancer-causing agents in animals.

"Our research has found that capsules of a purified indole speed up the breakdown of the hormone estrogen, which is a risk factor for breast cancer," says Michnovicz. "In mice we've found that this cruciferous indole substantially reduced the incidence, size and multiplicity of spontaneous mammary tumors."

What food will spark enthusiasm in the near future? One good prospect is citrus fruits, long loved as an excellent source of vitamin C but now being studied by scientists for a surprising treasure-trove of health-enhacing chemicals. In one study,conducted by nutrition specialists Dr. James Cerda, volunteers with high cholesterol levels were given capsules of grapefruit pection equivalent to two whole grapefruit daily for four weeks. These people lowered their blood cholesterol levels by an average of almost eight percent. "Since a one-percent drop in cholesterol causes about a two-per-cent drop in the risk of heart disease," says Cerda, "on average we lowered the heart-disease risk for these volunteers about 16 percent. In laboratory animals with existing atherosclerosis that were fed a high-fat diet for a year, those receiving pectin had 62 percent less plague in their arteries than the controls did." Pectin is soluble fiber found only in citrus fruit itself, not in the juice. "We could say that two grapefruit a day might keep the heart doctor away," Cerda adds.

While researchers study the disease-preventing ingredients of specific foods, remember that achieving a more healthful diet is a more immediate goal. Current scientific wisdom recommends, in addition to limiting intake of meat and fat, eating more fruits, vegetables, grains and legumes.

"It's silly to focus too much on single foods," says nutrition researcher Herbert Pierson. "We don't eat one food. We eat mixtures of foods and need to in order to get the full spectors in them. We have lost to learn about the foods that nourish and heal our bodies, but we have responsibility to select foods with our brains as well as our taste buds.

"The old saying is true---you care what you eat," Pierson concludes. "And you have to make that choice everyday."