From Prevention magazine, Oct. 1997, lead cover story,
(c) Rodale Press, Inc.
Cover line was "Healing Foods You'll Love - Beat fatigue, PMS, cholesterol and more! p. 97"
Nature's Best Medicines
The cancer / heart disease / brittle bones-and-more vaccine is here. And it's in your supermarket
by Ken Winston CaineLaboratory scientists grab headlines for cooking up new miraculous medicines. You and I, too, cook up miracle medicines. Daily. In our kitchens, and to much less fanfare. We work with nature’s most powerful healing and health-promoting potions.
These are drugs that come out of the ground and for which we need no prescription. These are medicines that for the most part we find in supermarkets and which are never tough to swallow.
They are life-preservers and life-enhancers that increase immunity and build healthy hearts and strong bones and defend against cancers and arthritis and diabetes and other debilitating and even deadly diseases. Each made it onto our list because it has the double-dip advantage of being tasty as well as being able to prevent more than one health problem.
Put all these foods in your grocery basket every week, and you'll get compliments on dinner. And be around to get those compliments for a long, long time.
Broccoli
This champion crucifer speaks many languages, and is welcome in cuisines worldwide--steamed, stir-fryed, blanched, baked, raw. But it’s not always the most wanted veggie in the West and that’s unfortunate.
Broccoli is fabulously full of fiber and immune system building vitamin C, and features a fistful of the phytochemicals thought to fight cancer.
True, broccoli is much-maligned, even held in contempt by a recent president but, politics aside, this veggie wins every nutritionist’s vote. Listen. Every single stalk puts up a big fight against big diseases in at least 4 ways:
1) It may make carcinogens impotent through “organosulfur” compounds.
2) It steps up the body’s production of a weak estrogen. This weak version seems to replace the “real” estrogen that’s implicated in breast cancer.
3) It offers heart protection through vitamin C. This antioxidant vitamin helps keep arteries healthfully elastic and helps prevent blood from getting sludgy. A single serving of broccoli gives us 97% of our Daily Value (DV) of vitamin C.
4) It contains glutathione, which may reduce the risk of arthritis, diabetes and heart disease, as well as bolster the immune system, lower cholesterol, lower blood pressure, and keep people at a healthy weight, according to a small, recent study.
5) It helps guard against cataracts and the leading cause of blindness over age 65--macular degneration--because it's reich in beta-carotene and its cousin lutein.
How much do I need? The amount of broccoli you might need to prevent disease hasn’t been quantified. But Walter C. Willett, MD, DrPH, chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, advises you to put it on your weekly shopping list right now--in any quantity. Broccoli can definitely be a contributor to your total daily score of five fruits and vegetables. Incidentally, just ½ cup is considered a “serving,” and delivers an impressive 2 grams of fiber!
Garlic
This potent, redolent herb wards off many a bad guy, and you needn't wear it in a braid around your neck. Eat it. Any way you can. There may be foods more medicinally potent than garlic, but few are loved as this.
One of garlic's most proven benefits is its ability to cut cholesterol, says Varro E. Tyler, PhD, Prevention advisor and professor emeritus of pharmocognosy at the Purdue University School of Pharmacy, West Lafayette, IN. It also acts like aspirin, keeping blood from clumping and sticking to artery walls.
Garlic has an antibacterial effect similar to penicillin. In fact, one source we found suggests that garlic was the antibacterial drug of choice until penicillin was discovered in 1928. Eating this pungent herb may help you fight a strep throat--as long as you don't use it instead of antibiotics for serious infections.
Garlic is an antioxidant and, intest-tube and animal studies, shows promise in preventing colon and breast cancers.
Allicin, a compound that is at least partly responsible for garlic’s potent odor, seems to be the main medicine at work here, says Dr. Tyler. Despite the fact that it’s been used for centuries, not a lot is known about it.
How much do I need? For heart-protective effects, eat one clove daily. Aged, cooked, raw, powdered? The jury is still weighing the evidence. But overall, studies seem to indicate any and all garlic intake is probably good for us in some way.
Kidney Beans
These staples of hearty winter chili boast the highest, healthiest fiber mix of any member of the legume family--and are especially high in heart-protecting folate, too.Part of their healing power comes from their 7 grams of filling fiber per half-cup serving. Of that, 2.8 grams is cholesterol-lowering soluble fiber. That adds up to dips in the risk of heart disease, stroke, and colon cancer. {A}
If that’s not enough, beans--kidneys and otherwise--are such good medicine that doctors prescribe them to diabetics (along with other high-fiber, complex carbohydrates) because they're digested slowly (helping maintain low blood sugar and normalizing troublesome insulin levels), says Prevention advisor James W. Anderson, MD, professor of medicine and clinical nutrition at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, Lexington.
Kidney beans help sweep wastes and carcinogens out of the colon, and are high in oligosaccharides. Some research suggests that oligosaccharides feed bacteria in the colon—bifidobacteria--that seem to protect from cancer.
Kidney beans are high in folate, the new superstar nutrient that may help keep blood levels of homocysteine low. (High levels are now considered a risk factor for heart disease.) Folate also is important in preventing birth defects. A half-cup serving provides 114 micrograms of folate, more than a quarter of our required DV.
Beans are heart-protective in more than one way: They contain potent antioxidants known as polyphenolics. In test-tube studies, polyphenolics worked better than Vitamin C in keeping fat in the blood from oxidizing--the first step in the formation of artery-clogging sludge. Human research is underway, says Dr. Anderson.
How much do I need? Aim for a cup and a half of cooked beans daily. That’s enough to lower cholesterol and provide the other health benefits, says Dr. Anderson.
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Counting Beans
Kidneys top the list for soluble fiber and tie with Lima beans for total fiber. Other beans supply healthy amounts as well. Here’s the measure, in grams, of soluble fiber and total soluble fiber per half-cup of cooked beans:(first figure is soluble fiber, second is total fiber)
Kidney beans 2.8, 6.9
Lima Beans 2.7, 6.9
Cranberry beans 2.7, 5.4
Black beans 2.4, 6.1
Navy beans 2.2, 6.5
Pinto beans 1.9, 5.9
Great Northern
beans 1.4, 5.0
Garbonzo beans 1.3, 4.3
Non-fat milk
Leave the mustache on your lip, fill your glass and join us in a milk toast. Milk--the non-fat variety--is the best food source of calcium around.Milk helps prevent brittle bones (osteoporosis), which affect at least half of all American women over age 50. Calcium is the bone-builder in milk, and the vitamin D in milk helps us absorb the calcium.
In addition, non-fat milk, combined with a low-fat diet rich in fruits and vegetables, has been shown to lower blood pressure as well as any single prescription drug, says Prevention advisor Judith Stern, ScD, RD, professor of nutrition and internal medicine at the University of California, Davis. The calcium, potassium and magnesium in milk help with that.
Milk consumption also has been associated with lower risk of kidney stones. That’s because the calcium binds the oxalate in the large bowel so that less is absorbed. Oxalate is what causes most kidney stones, says Dr. Willett, whose Harvard group has published two papers on this topic.
How much do I need? Each 8 oz. of milk contains 300 milligrams (mg) of calcium. Women under 50 and men under 65 need 1,000 mg of calcium per day. Older? Up that to 1,500 mg. It can be difficult to meet all of your calcium needs with milk, but it’s a smart way to get at least halfway or more to your daily requirement.
Oranges
We don’t know a better way to find concentrated sunshine in the dark, short days of winter. Peel and bite into an orange. This is the sweetest medicine we know.“Oranges are probably one of the best creations of the universe,” gushes James Cerda, MD, director of the Nutrition Research Laboratory at the University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville.
This juicy fruit is chock-full of vitamins and nutrients and soluble fibers that may ward off colds, lower cholesterol, build bones, prevent kidney stones, lessen risk of colon cancer, and speed recovery from heart attacks.The phytochemicals it contains may even be able to help fight breast cancer.
Vitamin C is a major player in the benefits oranges give you and they are robust in this nutrient. Each average orange packs 70 mg of C, 110% of our DV. In addition, oranges are ripe with folic acid, glutathione, assorted flavonoids, and potassium citrate, which has bgeen shown to dissolve kidney stones and is an important ingredient in sports drinks for keeping electrolytes in balance when you're sweating a lot.
How much do I need? Get at least an orange a day. Two would be better, says Cerda. Eat the whole orange (sans peel) to get the pulp and fiber. Don’t skip the albedo-- the mild-tasting white material just under the peel and comprising the cord at the center of the orange--it’s full of clot-fighting substances called flavonoidsJuice conveys fewer benefits, but is especially good when working out or sweating a lot in heat and humidity.
To pick the best: Look for firm, heavy oranges with bright skin. Avoid lightweight oranges (which are probably light on juice) and dull, dry skin, or spongy texture--indicators of aging.
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Orange Options
Oranges are always in season. Different varieties are available at different times.Valencias: Thin-skinned. Excellent for juicing or slicing. California and Arizona Valencias are available from February through October with peak harvests May through July. Florida and Texas crops are available from late March through June.
Navels: Seedless. Peel and segment easily. Have a thicker, more pebbled skin than Valencias. Are considered by some the best “eating orange.” Navels are harvested November through May.
Temples: Similar to the Navel, this Florida orange peels and segments easily and has an excellent flavor.
Salmon
Salmon is king when it comes to netting the myriad benefits of fish oil. The fish story is this: All fish have fats called omega-3s, but salmon is one of the richest sources. And omega-3s are turning out to be major players in the prevention of heart problems and maybe in controlling inflammatory problems like arthritis.For the heart: Omega-3s may guard against heart attacks. One study of 44,895 men found that guys who favored food with fins had a 26% lower risk of death from coronary disease than those who chose to forgo fish. In another study, people who ate the equivalent of just one serving of salmon weekly had half the risk of cardiac arrest as those who ate none.
It appears that these "good" fats work by assuring the orderly inflow of calcium, sodium, and other charged particles into each heart cell, which helps insure a strong, steady thump, bump--thump, bump.
For inflammation: This big fish reels in one of the shadiest characters implicated in rheumatoid arthritis inflammation, leukotriene B4. Scientists can measure a significant drop when fish oil is added to the diet.
Fish oil may also lessen severe mentrual cramping and other menstrual symptoms (though we've only seen one study so far showing convincing relief), and maybe even stave off depression.
How much do I need? A single 3-oz. serving of baked salmon provides 10 times the amount of omega-3s the typical American gets in a week. Eat at least one serving weekly. For menstrual cramp relief, you need to eat even more--4 to 6 ounces daily. To relieve rheumatoid arthritis symptoms, step up intake to at least one serving daily, or ask your doctor about supplementing with fish oil capsules. Tip: All species of salmon contain fish oil, although smoked salmon does not. (During smoking, much of the fat drips out.)
Tofu
Tofu. It almost sounds like an insult, and too many of us have shunned it as though it were. But this simple, palatable, easy-to-use and oh-so-versatile soybean derivative is nothing short of a superfood when it comes to our health.Tofu is mild and light-bodied and represents “one of our very best food choices,” says Dr. Anderson, of the University of Kentucky. Soy's potential health benefits are sweeping, he says. Topping the list is major heart protection: Its cholesterol-lowering effect has been shown in 37 studies.
Tofu is soybean curd, and soybeans are the richest source by far of isoflavones, a plant version of estrogen. This may be important in some of the other protective roles tofu is believed to play: menopause soother, osteoporosis preventer, breast-cancer-risk reducer. Isoflavones are also known kidney protectors. And there's evidence that soy may help reduce the risk of prostate cancer, as well.
How much do I need? For now, most soy researchers recommend 30 to 50 mg of isoflavones per day. That's about what the average intake is in Asia, where tofu is thought of as a comfort food. (A half-cup serving of tofu has 35 mg of isolflavones.) Cultivating a taste for tofu is easy. It can be added to just almost anything.
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How to Do Tofu
A serving of tofu daily may sound like a lot. It’s not. Really. Here are some smooth ways to slip it into your diet:· Blend it in a shake or smoothie.
· Crumble it on a salad.
· Chuck chunks into soups, stews, chili, marinara sauce.
· Slice it for a sandwich to replace cheese.
· Blend it into dips, dressings, custards, puddings.
Another sumptuous source of isoflavones: Try calcium-fortified, low-fat soy milk-with about 20 mg. isoflavones per 8 ounces. For a treat, wash down some White Wave Chocolate Silk—a smooth, chocolate soy milk.
Tomato sauce
Tomato sauce beats ripe tomatoes to a pulp when it comes to naming a nutritional strongman. Here’s where cooking really counts and makes Nature’s Best even better.Tomato sauce, especially that cooked in even the tiniest bit of olive oil (Can you say “Italian?”) seems to guard against both colon and prostate cancers. Some evidence suggests it may protect against esophogeal and stomach cancers as well. Plus, this special sauce may even contribute to agility as we age.
No problem getting our fill of this mighty medicine, tomato sauce works its way into everything from chili to Spanish rice.
The hot nutrient here is lycopene—an antioxidant carotenoid that is found in few other fruits and vegetables. Lycopene may prevent cancer from developing. Molecules called free radicals are thought to beat up innocent cells and force them to become cancerous, but lycopene may mop these radicals before they do harm. The nutrient may even be twice as potent a cancer fighter as strongman beta carotene, says Edward Giovannucci, MD, ScD of Harvard Medical School, Boston.
How much do I need? A few servings each week, but don’t eat a lot of fattening, cheese-and-pepperoni pizza to get your quota. Salsas and spaghetti sauce count. Interestingly, spaghetti sauces are best if they’re not completely fat-free.
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How to Leach Lycopene from a Tomato
To squeeze the full dose of usable lycopene from a tomato, you need to cook the tomato in oil. A tiny bit of oil will do, says Dr. Giovannucci, and heart healthy olive oil is just fine.The lycopene is absorbed into the oil as the heat of cooking breaks down the tomato’s cell walls. In experiments, people eating tomato sauce cooked in oil got roughly 10 times more lycopene into their systems as did people drinking processed tomato juice containing the same amount of lycopene.
Water
We bathe in it, relax in it, exercise in it--and should be guzzling it. Our bodies are mostly made of it. And it’s a wonder medicine. H2O.One thing water won’t do. It won’t set you back a pretty penny, unless you buy it in designer-shaped bottles. “It’s the original low-calorie, no-calorie beverage,” says Dr. Stern, of the University of California.
Water is an elixir required by every cell for optimum health, to keep our blood flowing, to keep our kidneys flushing out wastes. Getting enough water helps stave off the fatigue and muscle cramping that result from even minor dehydration, maintains body temperature, helps prevent kidney-stone formation, and keeps the skin plumped up and healthy looking. And, in a surprise finding of a large study, drinking five or more glasses a day of water seemed to slice women’s colon cancer risk in half compared to those who drank fewer than two glasses a day.
Our bodies need water. Without it we droop like thirsty houseplants. Each cell’s chemical, mineral, nutrient and vitamin balance depends upon just the right balance of fluid.
How much do I need? Your total fluid intake should be 48 to 64 ounces daily--more if you're very active.
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How to Drink Like a Fish
To get the prescribed six to eight glasses daily, we needn’t stand at the water cooler guzzling cup after cup. In fact, it is best if the intake is spaced out throughout the day.Tea, coffee, juices, soups, milk all count toward the total. Alcohol drinks don’t though--they're diuretic. For coffee, another diuretic, three cups count only for two. And when you’re really parched, remember this. Cool water really does hit the spot. Cool water is absorbed more quickly than room temperature water. Ahhhh.
