Food Synergy: The Key To A Healthy Diet
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Through the years, people have viewed the health benefits of vitamins and nutrients found in food individually. Most nutrition studies have isolated beta carotene, calcium,vitamin E, lycopene, omega-3, among other nutrients, to study its individual health benefits in the body. However, the frustrating results of numerous research studies simply strengthened the growing belief that there's much more to food and diet than simply the sum of its nutrient parts. David R. Jacobs, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Minnesota, argues in a recent commentary for the Nutrition Reviews journal that nutrition researchers ought to focus on whole food rather than only on single nutrients. "We argue for a need to return to food as the source of nutrition knowledge." Dr. Jacobs co-authored the article with Linda C. Tapsell, a nutrition researcher at the University of Wollongong in Australia.
According to Dr. Jacobs, nutrition science needs to consider the outcomes of "food synergy" --- the belief that the health benefits of certain food aren't most likely to come from a single nutrient but somewhat combinations of compounds that work better collectively than apart. "Every food is far more complicated than any drug,'' stated Dr. Jacobs. "It is sensible to want to break it down. But you get a lot of people talking in the popular press about carbohydrates and fats specifically as though they were unified entities. They are not. They are extremely complicated.''
When 2 scientists won a Nobel Prize in 1937 for distinguishing vitamin C as the essential component in citrus fruit that prevents scurvy, it somehow set the trend for the scientific community to concentrate on the health effects of biologically active single nutrients in food. Nutrition researchers are breaking down the nutrients in food to determine its most effective benefits, for example beta carotene from carrots, lycopene from tomatoes, omega-3 from salmon, potassium from banana, among others. Food rich in vitamin E have been widely regarded as being great for the heart.
Nevertheless, studies revealed that attributing the broad health benefits of a diet to a single compound is considered misguided. The notion that a diet rich in beta carotene and vitamin A can decrease many kinds of cancer had been inaccurate based on the popular 1994 Finnish study where smokers who had taken beta carotene were found to have an 18 percent higher incidence of lung cancer.
Since then, studies of other vitamins, particularly vitamins E and B, have also failed to demonstrate a benefit. According to some quarters, vitamins are too often examined in sick people while the real benefit may be in preventing disease. However, Jacobs says that the better explanation may merely be that food synergy, rather than the biological activity of a few key nutrients, is the real reason that particular diets appear to decrease the dangers of heart disease and other health problems.
So, when you are unsure what vitamins to take, just remember to have a nutrient-rich diet plan.
Article Source: Articlelogy.com
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