Nutrition can cause and reverse most diseases. Scientists have discovered that almost all of our genes are affected by the food we eat and change according to the nutrients available to them.
The biochemical reactions of the body’s metabolic network are determined by the sugars, amino acids, fatty acids and vitamins found in a diet, a team of researchers from the University of Cambridge and the Francis Crick Institute in London have found.
The current medical model is based on the assumption that genes play a significant part in disease. However, the researchers have found a stage before that – how we feed our genes.
Although scientists have known of the connection between diet and genetic behaviour, the new research has discovered that food plays a more significant part than suspected, affecting up to 90 per cent of our genes.
It has also been thought that genes control the way nutrients are broken down, but the new research shows that the opposite is also true; the way nutrients are made available affects the behaviour of the genes.
“Nearly all of a cell’s genes are influenced by changes to the nutrients they have access to. In fact, in many cases, the effects were so strong that changing a cell’s metabolic profile could make some of its genes behave in a completely different manner,” lead researcher Markus Ralser said (Nature Microbiol., 2016).
So let’s look at supportive foods. Everyone knows that an apple a day is beneficial. Eating flavonoid-rich fruits (such as apples, pears, blueberries and strawberries) could help keep the pounds off, especially if you are at high risk of middle-age spread. A daily 80g serving will help to maintain a healthy weight, and you could also shed a few pounds at the same time, researchers say.
There is a tendency to put on weight as we grow older. However, this can be prevented by eating a little of these types of fruit each day. It works at any age and for both sexes, researchers from Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health say.
A glass of beetroot juice every day improves your blood pressure
The key compounds are flavonoids, which can also be found in tea, chocolate and wine. They assessed the diets of more than 124,000 men and women for 24 years, focusing on three age and gender groups: women aged 36, women aged 48 and men who were 47 on average when the study began.
Those who ate these fruits every day were able to maintain their weight and some even reported losing a few pounds. The flavonoid-rich fruits, which also contained anthocyanins (pigments that give the fruit their blue or purple colouring), were especially effective for weight control. These included blueberries, strawberries, cherries, blackberries, grapes and blackcurrants, as well as radishes (BMJ, 2016).
Another highly-coloured food is beetroot. A glass of beetroot juice every day improves your blood pressure (even if you are elderly and have already suffered from heart failure). The juice, rich in inorganic nitrates, also improves your endurance for aerobic exercise.
Drinking around 2.4 ounces of beet juice (which contains 6mmol of inorganic nitrate) every day improved aerobic endurance by 24 per cent after just one week, and reduced systolic blood pressure by 5 to 10mmHg.
The juice was given to 19 elderly people with heart failure, whose shortness of breath and fatigue made any exercise or exertion difficult. They were first given either a placebo, or ‘dummy’ drink, or a glass of beet juice. Following this, the entire group were given the juice, which they drank every day for a week.
There were no adverse reactions or side effects from drinking the juice, the researchers from Wake Forest University in North Carolina said (JACC: Heart Failure, 2016).
Eating organically is really better for you. Organic meat and milk has 50 per cent more Omega-3 fatty acids (which can lower your risk of heart disease) and milk also contains more linoleic acid and higher levels of iron, vitamin E and carotenoids, a new study has found.
Although people buy organic for various reasons, one is that it is more nutritious and healthier. However, there has not been a review of the evidence to confirm if these beliefs are justified, a team of researchers from a number of European universities said.
As a result, the team analysed 67 previously published studies comparing the nutrients found in organic and non-organic meat. The difference in levels of Omega-3s was significant, they found, and could be explained by the high levels of grazing and foraging by organic cattle. Non-organic cattle are fed grain.
Charles Benbrook, of Benbrook Consulting Services in Oregon, said: “It is not something magical about organic. It’s about what the animals are being fed.”
An earlier study by the same researchers found that organic fruit and vegetables had higher levels of antioxidants and lower pesticide residues than intensively farmed crops (Br. Nutr., 2016).
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