Mother Nature tucked a medicine chest full of disease-fighting antioxidants into fruits, vegetables, grains and even spices. These beneficial compounds fight damage to cells from rogue molecules called free radicals - and can help to reduce your risk of heart disease, cancer and dozens of age-related health problems.
Until recently, experts didn't know which foods had the highest levels. According to Hong Kong scientists who tested the antioxidant power of equivalent portions of 34 fruits and vegetables, these are among the ones that pack the most antioxidant power:
1 Strawberry
2 Lemon
3 Plum
4 Orange
5 Kiwi fruit
6Grape fruit
7 Persimmon
8 Apple (green)
9 Pak choi
10 Spring onion
11 Mandarin
12 Mangetout
13 Onion
14 Apple (red)
15 Turnip (green)
16 Cabbage (long)
17 Broccoli
18 Cauliflower
19 Garlic
20 Tomato
2 choice Eat More whole-grain foods
Once, high-fibre eating was perfectly natural because we ate mostly unprocessed foods. Then the rise of the processed food industry stripped our diet of fibre. What happened next was even worse. Once the need for fibre was recognised, manufacturers introduced a new crop of high-fibre health foods that made for less-than-pleasant eating - 'brain' cereals that made you feel as if you were chewing on pebbles, gritty wholewheat pasta and health bars with the texture of sawdust. The alternative wasn't very appealing either: mixing gluey fibre supplements with water, to be downed as quickly as possible.
No wonder the concept of 'high-fibre' foods scares people. But fear not. Shop shelves are crammed with high-fibre cereals and wholewheat breads that taste good and have a great texture. Delicious whole-grain pastas, brown rice and more exotic grains are commonplace. Despite this bounty, though, the average British adult manages to get just 12g of fibre a day - far short of the average 25g experts recommended.
Fibre becomes more important with each passing birthday, simply because with age, food moves more slowly through the digestive system. Partly, it's a natural slowdown, but often, getting less physical activity and drinking less fluid play a role, too. Fibre helps by making your stools bulkier, which stimulates your digestive, tract to keep things moving.
Supplements work, but nothing beats the fibre in real food. You can get all the fibre you need from fruit, vegetables and whole grains. Although fibre supplements will help with constipation, they don't include all the other wonderful nutrients you get from natural foods - the vitamin E, good fats, protein and antioxidants that help to protect against heart disease and diabetes and even cancer.
HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH?
If you're trying to ensure that past dietary lapses don't catch up with you, perhaps take even more fibre than the recommended intake. To reduce your risk of the disorders above, plus high blood pressure and intestinal disorders, your goal should be 30-40g of fibre a day.
According to the UK Women's Cohort Study, involving 35,792 women aged 35 to 69 years, a fibre-rich diet - over 30g a day -halved the risk of a premenopausal woman developing breast cancer over the seven year follow-up. And in a large study of the eating habits of more than half a million people in ten European countries, those in the top 20 percent for fibre intake - consuming an average of 35g of fibre daily - had their risk of bowel cancer slashed by 40 percent,
compared with those eating only 15g fibre daily (still more than the UK average intake). To get 30-35g fibre daily you need seven portions of fruit and vegetables a day - similar to the amounts eaten by Mediterranean populations, who have a lower overall cancer risk - plus the equivalent of five slices of wholemeal bread.
Getting fibre from a wide variety of sources yields the most health benefits, say French researchers who analysed the diets and health of 6,000 people. They found that whole grains worked best for weight control, lowering blood pressure and reducing levels of heart-threatening homocysteine in the bloodstream; fruits controlled tummy fat and cut blood pressure (thanks in part to all the fibre in the tiny seeds packed into berries); vegetables lowered blood pressure and homocysteine; and fibre in nuts had the strongest effects on weight control tummy fat and controlling blood sugar.
Fibre becomes more important with each passing birthday
Switching to whole grains is one of the easiest eating upgrades you can make. You probably already eat bread, rice and pasta, so there's no need to add or subtract anything from your diet. Just reach for a different type.
But if you increase your fibre intake too quickly, you are likely to get intestinal gas, bloating and even cramping pains. Take things slowly - and keep up your fluid intake to soak up the extra fibre, or you may get conspitated. So in week one, switch to wholewheat bread and aim for hour daily
servings of vegetables and fruit. The second week, have six portions of fruit and veg daily and add brown ice. The third week, go to nine servings of fruit and vegetables and give whole-grain pasta a try. Eat more beans, too. They're a great source of fibre.
HIGH FIBRE SUPERFOODS
We have already extolled the virtues of beans as antioxidant powerhouses, but their fibre content is among the best of any food. Beans have both kinds of fibre: insouluble, which helps your gastrointestinal system to eliminate waste products more quickly, and soluble, which forms a gel in your intestines that helps to lower levels of 'bad' LDL cholesterol by whisking it out of your body. Research shows that 175g of beans a day can lower cholesterol by up to 10 percent in just six weeks. No natural food has more fibre. And all that fibre, plus the protein, means beans are low on the glycaemic index, a measure of food's impact on blood sugar.
Beans aren't the type of food you eat several times a day, though. More likely, you'll turn to breads, cereals and pasta for much of your fibre intake. According to a survey by the Medical Research Council wholemeal bread and breakfast cereals account for more than three-quarters of all servings of whole-grain foods. But most people don't eat nearly enough - in fact, one in three British adults eats no whole-grain foods at all on a daily basis, and less than 5 percent eat three or more servings a day.
And although brown and wholemeal breads are growing in popularity, traditional 'sliced white' is still British's favourite, accounting for 71 percent of all the bread we eat. Yet British consumers have a stunning choice of breads - over 200 varieties are on offer.
So how do you make the switch to healthier bread? Check the fibre content on the label - don't go on the amount per portion or slice, as this is often misleading; look for the amount of fibre, in grams, per 100g of bread. On average, white bread has 1.9g, brown 3.5g and whole-grain 5g - nearly three times as much as white.
Not a bread eater? Then how about whole grain cereal or oatmeal? Both are health superfoods, Betaglucan, the soluble fibre found in oats, acts like a sponge, trapping cholesterol - rich bile acids in the intestines and eliminating them. The result is lower LDL Cholesterol because there's less cholesterol to be absorbed into the bloodstream. Having a big bowl of porridge a day (about 225g) could cut cholesterol by an extra 2 to 3 percent.
Healthy, filling and ready to eat, whole-grain cereal is a perfect convenience health food. One study found that participants who ate whole-grain cereal every day were 17 percent less likely to die over the next several years from any cause and 20 percent less likely to die from cardiovascular disease than those who rarely or never ate whole-grain cereal.
Want whole grains for other parts of the day? Add brown rice and other fibre-rich grains such as barley or bulgur wheat to you plate. So, what's wrong with white rice? Milling and polishing rip off more than the chewy coating on rice; they also steal fibre and nutrients that make brown rice a delicious, satisfying, disease-battling superfood. Compared to white, brown rice packs four times more insoluble fibre as well as good amounts of niacin, vitamin B6, magnesium, manganese, phosphorous, selenium and vitamin E. Best of all, it's easy to find in supermarkets these days - even in quicker-cooking forms for nights when you just don't have 45 minutes to wait for dinner to cook.
Toast your health
-- with water
Sparkling or still, bottled or straight from the tap, good, old-fashioned water could cut your risk of a deadly heart attack by as much as 54 percent - and at the same time ease consptitation, boost flagging, energy and perhaps even lower your risk of cancers of the breast, prostate and large intestine, research suggests.
In a study f 20,000 women and men, researchers found that those who drowned at least five glasses of water every day had a significantly lower risk of heart attacks than those who whet their whistles with coffee, orange juice and other beverages. Why? Water is absorbed readily into the bloodstream, keeping blood diluted and less likely to from heart-threatening clots. Other liquids, the researchers
say, require digestion, a process that draws fluid out of the bloodstream, thickening the blood and increasing clot risk.
Are you getting enough water? After the age of 60, don't rely on feelings of thirst to tell you the answer. That's because sensations of thirst decline as we get older - unfortunately, just at the time when many people drink less water to avoid dealing with urination problems such as stress incontinence in women or prostate problems in men. The best way to know if you're fully hydrated? Examine your urine - if it's pale and has only a faint odour, you're probably drinking enough. If it's dark, scanty or has a strong odour, you probably need to drink more water and other fluids.
What you need: about six glasses a day
The standard advice to have eight glasses a day is now considered by many experts to be overstated. And tea counts, too - indeed, a recent study showed that drinking tea is just as hydrating as water. So have tea, coffee and juice, but try to include plain water as well. If you're eating a lot of juicy fruits and vegetables, you'll get fluid from them, too.
Until recently, experts didn't know which foods had the highest levels. According to Hong Kong scientists who tested the antioxidant power of equivalent portions of 34 fruits and vegetables, these are among the ones that pack the most antioxidant power:
1 Strawberry
2 Lemon
3 Plum
4 Orange
5 Kiwi fruit
6Grape fruit
7 Persimmon
8 Apple (green)
9 Pak choi
10 Spring onion
11 Mandarin
12 Mangetout
13 Onion
14 Apple (red)
15 Turnip (green)
16 Cabbage (long)
17 Broccoli
18 Cauliflower
19 Garlic
20 Tomato
2 choice Eat More whole-grain foods
Once, high-fibre eating was perfectly natural because we ate mostly unprocessed foods. Then the rise of the processed food industry stripped our diet of fibre. What happened next was even worse. Once the need for fibre was recognised, manufacturers introduced a new crop of high-fibre health foods that made for less-than-pleasant eating - 'brain' cereals that made you feel as if you were chewing on pebbles, gritty wholewheat pasta and health bars with the texture of sawdust. The alternative wasn't very appealing either: mixing gluey fibre supplements with water, to be downed as quickly as possible.
No wonder the concept of 'high-fibre' foods scares people. But fear not. Shop shelves are crammed with high-fibre cereals and wholewheat breads that taste good and have a great texture. Delicious whole-grain pastas, brown rice and more exotic grains are commonplace. Despite this bounty, though, the average British adult manages to get just 12g of fibre a day - far short of the average 25g experts recommended.
Fibre becomes more important with each passing birthday, simply because with age, food moves more slowly through the digestive system. Partly, it's a natural slowdown, but often, getting less physical activity and drinking less fluid play a role, too. Fibre helps by making your stools bulkier, which stimulates your digestive, tract to keep things moving.
Supplements work, but nothing beats the fibre in real food. You can get all the fibre you need from fruit, vegetables and whole grains. Although fibre supplements will help with constipation, they don't include all the other wonderful nutrients you get from natural foods - the vitamin E, good fats, protein and antioxidants that help to protect against heart disease and diabetes and even cancer.
HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH?
If you're trying to ensure that past dietary lapses don't catch up with you, perhaps take even more fibre than the recommended intake. To reduce your risk of the disorders above, plus high blood pressure and intestinal disorders, your goal should be 30-40g of fibre a day.
According to the UK Women's Cohort Study, involving 35,792 women aged 35 to 69 years, a fibre-rich diet - over 30g a day -halved the risk of a premenopausal woman developing breast cancer over the seven year follow-up. And in a large study of the eating habits of more than half a million people in ten European countries, those in the top 20 percent for fibre intake - consuming an average of 35g of fibre daily - had their risk of bowel cancer slashed by 40 percent,
compared with those eating only 15g fibre daily (still more than the UK average intake). To get 30-35g fibre daily you need seven portions of fruit and vegetables a day - similar to the amounts eaten by Mediterranean populations, who have a lower overall cancer risk - plus the equivalent of five slices of wholemeal bread.
Getting fibre from a wide variety of sources yields the most health benefits, say French researchers who analysed the diets and health of 6,000 people. They found that whole grains worked best for weight control, lowering blood pressure and reducing levels of heart-threatening homocysteine in the bloodstream; fruits controlled tummy fat and cut blood pressure (thanks in part to all the fibre in the tiny seeds packed into berries); vegetables lowered blood pressure and homocysteine; and fibre in nuts had the strongest effects on weight control tummy fat and controlling blood sugar.
Fibre becomes more important with each passing birthday
Switching to whole grains is one of the easiest eating upgrades you can make. You probably already eat bread, rice and pasta, so there's no need to add or subtract anything from your diet. Just reach for a different type.
But if you increase your fibre intake too quickly, you are likely to get intestinal gas, bloating and even cramping pains. Take things slowly - and keep up your fluid intake to soak up the extra fibre, or you may get conspitated. So in week one, switch to wholewheat bread and aim for hour daily
servings of vegetables and fruit. The second week, have six portions of fruit and veg daily and add brown ice. The third week, go to nine servings of fruit and vegetables and give whole-grain pasta a try. Eat more beans, too. They're a great source of fibre.
HIGH FIBRE SUPERFOODS
We have already extolled the virtues of beans as antioxidant powerhouses, but their fibre content is among the best of any food. Beans have both kinds of fibre: insouluble, which helps your gastrointestinal system to eliminate waste products more quickly, and soluble, which forms a gel in your intestines that helps to lower levels of 'bad' LDL cholesterol by whisking it out of your body. Research shows that 175g of beans a day can lower cholesterol by up to 10 percent in just six weeks. No natural food has more fibre. And all that fibre, plus the protein, means beans are low on the glycaemic index, a measure of food's impact on blood sugar.
Beans aren't the type of food you eat several times a day, though. More likely, you'll turn to breads, cereals and pasta for much of your fibre intake. According to a survey by the Medical Research Council wholemeal bread and breakfast cereals account for more than three-quarters of all servings of whole-grain foods. But most people don't eat nearly enough - in fact, one in three British adults eats no whole-grain foods at all on a daily basis, and less than 5 percent eat three or more servings a day.
And although brown and wholemeal breads are growing in popularity, traditional 'sliced white' is still British's favourite, accounting for 71 percent of all the bread we eat. Yet British consumers have a stunning choice of breads - over 200 varieties are on offer.
So how do you make the switch to healthier bread? Check the fibre content on the label - don't go on the amount per portion or slice, as this is often misleading; look for the amount of fibre, in grams, per 100g of bread. On average, white bread has 1.9g, brown 3.5g and whole-grain 5g - nearly three times as much as white.
Not a bread eater? Then how about whole grain cereal or oatmeal? Both are health superfoods, Betaglucan, the soluble fibre found in oats, acts like a sponge, trapping cholesterol - rich bile acids in the intestines and eliminating them. The result is lower LDL Cholesterol because there's less cholesterol to be absorbed into the bloodstream. Having a big bowl of porridge a day (about 225g) could cut cholesterol by an extra 2 to 3 percent.
Healthy, filling and ready to eat, whole-grain cereal is a perfect convenience health food. One study found that participants who ate whole-grain cereal every day were 17 percent less likely to die over the next several years from any cause and 20 percent less likely to die from cardiovascular disease than those who rarely or never ate whole-grain cereal.
Want whole grains for other parts of the day? Add brown rice and other fibre-rich grains such as barley or bulgur wheat to you plate. So, what's wrong with white rice? Milling and polishing rip off more than the chewy coating on rice; they also steal fibre and nutrients that make brown rice a delicious, satisfying, disease-battling superfood. Compared to white, brown rice packs four times more insoluble fibre as well as good amounts of niacin, vitamin B6, magnesium, manganese, phosphorous, selenium and vitamin E. Best of all, it's easy to find in supermarkets these days - even in quicker-cooking forms for nights when you just don't have 45 minutes to wait for dinner to cook.
Toast your health
-- with water
Sparkling or still, bottled or straight from the tap, good, old-fashioned water could cut your risk of a deadly heart attack by as much as 54 percent - and at the same time ease consptitation, boost flagging, energy and perhaps even lower your risk of cancers of the breast, prostate and large intestine, research suggests.
In a study f 20,000 women and men, researchers found that those who drowned at least five glasses of water every day had a significantly lower risk of heart attacks than those who whet their whistles with coffee, orange juice and other beverages. Why? Water is absorbed readily into the bloodstream, keeping blood diluted and less likely to from heart-threatening clots. Other liquids, the researchers
say, require digestion, a process that draws fluid out of the bloodstream, thickening the blood and increasing clot risk.
Are you getting enough water? After the age of 60, don't rely on feelings of thirst to tell you the answer. That's because sensations of thirst decline as we get older - unfortunately, just at the time when many people drink less water to avoid dealing with urination problems such as stress incontinence in women or prostate problems in men. The best way to know if you're fully hydrated? Examine your urine - if it's pale and has only a faint odour, you're probably drinking enough. If it's dark, scanty or has a strong odour, you probably need to drink more water and other fluids.
What you need: about six glasses a day
The standard advice to have eight glasses a day is now considered by many experts to be overstated. And tea counts, too - indeed, a recent study showed that drinking tea is just as hydrating as water. So have tea, coffee and juice, but try to include plain water as well. If you're eating a lot of juicy fruits and vegetables, you'll get fluid from them, too.
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