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Can Certain Foods Keep Disease at Bay?
Lucy Gardner, SRD, Community Dietitian, Community Health Oxfordshire
Introduction If you’ve made it this far, are you healthy enough to enjoy the rest of your life? A lot of us may live into our 80s or 90s, but living longer isn’t enjoyable if you’re not well enough to benefit from an extended life. Is the key to staying healthy eating food that keeps disease at bay? Hippocrates certainly thought so 2500 years ago with his philosophy ‘food as medicine’. Recently there has been an explosion of consumer interest in the health enhancing role of specific foods, as well as their ability to thwart disease. This article explores the evidence surrounding the link between foods and disease prevention, particularly
around four of the main chronic diseases, and examines whether eating certain foods such as ‘superfoods’ really packs a healthy punch above the rest of the food available to us? Certain diets and lifestyles can increase disease risk1
which may contribute to avoiding illness. So do you really need super foods for a super healthy you? Can our daily diet be a cure for everything from arthritis to improving our IQ?
The superfoods The word ‘superfood’ was introduced in the 1990s to describe foods packed with nutrients considered to be especially beneficial for health and wellbeing.2 One of the original superfoods is spinach. Popeye, the cartoon character, used to gulp tins of the dark green wonder food to give him strength and this message was absorbed in many homes by his young fans. There is a huge amount of hype surrounding superfoods and far less scientific research to back the claims up. New superfoods are put forward at regular intervals and claims are at an all time high, ranging from preventing anything from heart disease to hayfever. Sales of superfoods, such as blueberries, tend to soar when such claims are publicised.3
As I write this article, the purple
potato, high in antioxidants, has just been launched into supermarkets, and we are being told they are ‘better for us’. To put things in perspective, even a deep-fried
Mars Bar has some nutritional value. However, fruit and vegetables are more vital and obvious sources of nutrients. It appears that the general population is a long way off from achieving even the five daily portions of fruit and vegetables recommended.4
In
any case, just because a food is brimming full of one particular nutrient, once we have reached our
Baked beans Apples Salmon
nutritional requirements, any excess will be excreted at the other end! So it is quite possible that we should be
forgetting acai berries and seaweed and regarding everyday foods, such as the simple banana, as superfoods. Table One highlights these everyday wonder foods, which can help contribute to a balanced, healthful diet.
Table One: Everyday Superfoods
Everyday superfoods What they provide Brazil nuts The egg
Jam packed full of protein, fibre vitamins and minerals, particularly selenium
The humble egg. Providing part of our daily protein requirement as well as vitamins and minerals.
A powerhouse of protein, calcium, iron and fibre. A low glycaemic index food. The tomato sauce contains the antioxidant, lycopene. Also a source of fibre.
Forget super fruits. Try an apple a day. Brimming with antioxidants, particularly vitamin C. One apple can provide a quarter of our daily vitamin requirements. Also contains soluble fibre.
Generally fish is an excellent source of protein, vitamins and minerals. Oily fish such as salmon also contain omega-3 fats. In the limelight since the 1970s when it was observed the Greenland Inuit had low mortality from coronary heart disease.5
Data from McCance and Widdowson6 The American Dietetic Association advocates
that foods such as super foods should not be used to imply that there are good and bad foods, but rather that all foods should be incorporated into a balanced diet to maximise health.7
The next section
will look at some of the more common diseases and examine the evidence as to whether certain foods keep these specific diseases at bay.
but the focus here is solely on the nutritional modifications
32 | Complete Nutrition Vol.10 No.6 December/January 2010/11
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