Healthy Food

Dr. Gary Fraser, specialized in heart diseases, has started to put nuts on his breakfast cereal. He and his colleagues studied the eating habits of a large religious group, who did not smoke or drink. They discovered that those people who ate a small handful of nuts five times or more a week had half the risk of coronary heart diseaseof those who rarely ate nuts. "Nuts, preferably unsalted, are a good source of unsaturated fats and vitamin E" says Dr. Fraser.

Researches are finding out about the disease-fighting and life-improving powers of everyday foods. People who live in the Mediterranean countries are, in general, healthy. Some features of their cuisine-fresh fruit, vegetables and whole grains, for instance are all part of a healthy dietbut others aren't. For example there is the French paradox. The French men eat as much sturated fat as the English but the death rate from heart disease for French men is only about 30% of that for Engish men. Some researches say this protection from heart disease is largerly because of wine, mostly red every day with meals. Most doctors agree that two moderate drinks a day probably have a protective effect on the hearth but it is obviously bad to drink too much.

When man people think of the Mediterranean cuisine, they immediately picture garlic and oninos. Modern science is finding surprising medicinal powers in these. They contain many sulphur compounds, which kill bacteria and viruses. Garlic also thins the blood and this may be good for reducing the risk of heart disease.

In Japan, green tea is a popular drink. Research done on mice showed that green tea reduces the incidence of certain types of cancer. The proportion of Japanese men who smoke is double that of British men but Japanese men only have about half the lung cancer mortality. Perhaps the green tea helps to explain that.

Scientists were surprised when they started studying healthy Eskimos in Greenland. They eat vast quantities of fat, but they have very low death rates from heart disease. One reason is that the Eskimo diet includes a great deal of fish salmon, mackerel, herring and others rich in fish oils. These oils appearto thin the blood and may protect against colon cancer.

"We have lots of learn about the foods that nourish and heal our bodie", says nutrition researcher Herbert Piereson, but we have a responsibility to select foods with our brains an well as our taste bud.

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