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starchy foods, grains, vegetables, and nuts were consumed were significantly less likely to exhibit chronic symptoms of wheezing, allergic rhinoconjunctivitis, and allergic eczema.
Eggs (along with fizzy drinks) have also been associated with asthma attacks in children, along with respiratory symptoms, such as wheezing, shortness of breath, and exercise-induced coughing.
Removing eggs and dairy from the diet has been shown to improve asthmatic children’s lung function in as few as eight weeks.52
For example, the Harvard Nurses’ Health Study found that women who obtained high levels of vitamin E from a nut-rich diet appeared to have nearly half the risk of asthma of those who didn’t, but those who took vitamin E supplements saw no benefit at all.58
Processed foods have less, and animal-derived foods have no fibre at all. Animals have bones to hold them up; plants have fibre.
it’s the equivalent of a bowl of oatmeal with berries or a serving of baked beans.
You’d have to eat a dozen bananas a day just to get the bare minimum recommended amount of potassium. What are some of the truly potassium-rich foods? The healthiest common whole-food sources are probably greens, beans, and sweet potatoes.
Citrus fruit intake has been associated with reduced stroke risk—even more so than apples.29 Say I can’t compare them? I just did!
So eating a few oranges before snowboarding may help keep your fingers and toes from getting as chilly.
free radical is what it sounds like—a molecule that can be unstable, out of control, and violently reactive.
When superoxide comes in contact with DNA, it can damage your genes, which, if not repaired, can cause mutations in your chromosomes that may lead to cancer.
In scientific circles, the phenomenon by which oxygen molecules grab stray electrons and go crazy is called oxidant, or oxidative, stress. According to the theory, the resulting cellular damage is what essentially causes aging.
By adding lemon juice, which contains the antioxidant vitamin C. Antioxidants can keep your food from oxidizing, and they may do the same inside your body.
The food category that averages the most antioxidants is herbs and spices.
Not bad. Now sprinkle on a single teaspoonful of dried oregano or marjoram, oregano’s sweeter and milder twin. That alone could double your meal’s antioxidant power, up to more than 300 units.51 How about a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast? By adding just half a teaspoon of cinnamon, you could bring the antioxidant power of your meal from 20 units to 120 units. And if you can stand the punch, adding even a pinch of cloves could bring your unassuming breakfast up to an antioxidant score of 160 units.
“Vegetables, legumes (beans, peas, and lentils), fruits, and whole grains should replace meats and dairy products as primary staples of the diet.”
For example, the Alzheimer’s rates among Japanese men living in the United States are significantly higher than those of Japanese men living in Japan.91 The Alzheimer’s rates among Africans in Nigeria are up to four times lower
thought to be due to the shift from a traditional rice-and-vegetable-based diet to one featuring triple the dairy and six times the meat.
They found that women who consumed at least one serving of blueberries and two servings of strawberries each week had slower rates of cognitive decline—by as much as two and a half years—compared with those who didn’t eat berries.
“Fruit and vegetable juices may play an important role in delaying the onset of Alzheimer’s disease,” the researchers concluded, “particularly
among those who are at high risk for the disease.”121
for berries and green tea in part 2.
Alzheimer’s, if you do know anyone suffering from the disease, regularly cooking him or her saffron-spiced paella may help.
Yes, cooking methods matter. A baked apple has three times more AGEs than a raw apple, and a grilled hot dog has more than a boiled hot dog. But the source is what matters most: a baked apple has 45 units of AGEs compared to a raw apple’s 13 units, while a grilled hot dog has 10,143 units compared to a boiled hot dog’s 6,736. The researchers recommend cooking meat using moist-heat cooking methods, such as steaming or stewing, but even boiled fish has more than 10 times more AGEs than a sweet potato roasted for an hour. Meat averages about 20 times more AGEs than highly processed foods like
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13 Why such a discrepancy? The regular use of the spice turmeric in Indian cooking has been proposed as one possible explanation.
Very little of the curcumin you eat gets absorbed into your bloodstream, however, so it may never come in sufficient contact with tumors outside the digestive tract.15 But what doesn’t get absorbed into your blood ends up in your colon, where it could impact the cells lining your large intestine where cancerous polyps develop.
In a last-ditch attempt to save the lives of fifteen patients with advanced colorectal cancer who didn’t respond to any of the standard chemotherapy agents or radiation, oncologists started them on a turmeric extract. In the two to four months of treatment, it appeared to help stall the disease in one-third of the patients, five out of fifteen.18
The low cancer rate in India may be due in part to the spices they use, but it may also stem from the types of foods they are putting those spices on. India is one of the world’s largest producers of fruits and vegetables, and only about 7 percent of the adult population eats meat on a daily basis. What most of the population does eat every day are dark-green, leafy vegetables and legumes,20 such as beans, split peas, chickpeas, and lentils, which are packed with another class of cancer-fighting compounds called phytates.
The answer might lie in natural compounds called phytates, which are found in the seeds of plants—in other words, in all whole grains, beans, nuts, and seeds. Phytates have been shown to detoxify excess iron in the body, which otherwise can generate a particularly harmful kind of free radical called hydroxyl radicals.
For many years, phytates were maligned as inhibitors of mineral absorption, which is why you might have heard advice to roast, sprout, or soak your nuts to get rid of the phytates. In theory, this would allow you to absorb more minerals, such as calcium. This belief stemmed from a series of laboratory experiments on puppies from 1949 that suggested that phytates had a bone-softening, anti-calcifying effect,38 as well as from subsequent studies with similar findings on rats.39 But more recently, in light of actual human data, phytates’ image has undergone a complete makeover.40 Those who eat
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bone loss, and fewer hip fractures.42 Phytates appear to protect bone in a manner similar to that of antiosteoporosis drugs like Fosamax,43 but without the risk of osteonecrosis (bone rot) of the jaw, a rare, potentially disfiguring side effect associated with that class of drugs.
Petri-dish studies have shown that phytates inhibit the growth of virtually all human cancer cells tested so far—including cancers of the colon, breast, cervix, prostate, liver, pancreas, and skin48—while leaving normal cells alone.
Tumors concentrate these compounds so efficiently that phytate scans can be used to trace the spread of cancer within the body.
Phytates target cancer cells through a combination of antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and immune-enhancing activities.
High phytate intake has been associated with less heart disease, less diabetes, and fewer kidney stones.
Maybe phytates should be considered “Vitamin P.”58
In other words, the study subjects apparently weren’t dying early because they ate less of some beneficial compound like phytates in plants. The findings suggest there may be something harmful in the meat itself.
But this thermostat-like system only works effectively with the primary source of iron in the human diet: the nonheme iron variety found predominantly in plant foods.
The healthiest sources of iron are whole grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, dried fruits, and green, leafy vegetables.
Consuming vitamin C–rich foods can improve iron absorption. The amount of vitamin C in a single orange can enhance iron absorption as much as
your best bet is to avoid tobacco, excess alcohol intake, and obesity and to eat a diet low in animal products, refined grains, and added sugars97 and rich in beans, lentils, split peas, and dried fruit.98
at least weekly heartburn and/or acid regurgitation, compared to just 5 percent of the population in Asia.105 This suggests that dietary factors may play a key role.
This helps explain why those who eat meat have been found to have twice the odds of reflux-induced oesophageal inflammation compared with vegetarians.113
For example, such respiratory infections as influenza and pneumonia kill nearly fifty-seven thousand Americans each year.16
They are often marked for destruction by antibodies, which are special proteins made by another type of white blood cell, known as B cells, that home in like smart bombs and stick to invaders.
each of your B cells produces only one type of antibody, then you’d need to have a billion different types of B cells given the incredible variety of potential pathogens on our planet. And you do!
This is where the immune system comes in, specifically a special type of white blood cell called intraepithelial lymphocytes. These cells serve two functions: They condition and repair the thin intestinal lining, and they also serve as its first line of gut defense against pathogens.
There is one animal product that has also been shown to potentially block the cancer-causing effects of dioxins—camel urine.36 So next time your kids don’t want to eat their fruits and veggies, you can just say, “Hey, it’s either the broccoli or camel pee. Your choice.”
But the athletes consuming blueberries actually doubled their killer cell counts, to more than four billion.
In theory, though, cardamom-infused blueberry muffins may increase the number of circulating natural killer cells in the body, as well as boost their cancer-killing instincts.
