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The smelly food that beats expensive heart and blood drugs
4th January 2009
* The smelly food that can lower blood
pressure new research results revealed
* The new type of tomato that fights
cancer?
* Why I'm not convinced by this latest
Frankenstein 'superfood'
Those naysayers who dislike alternative health and
natural therapies...
They especially love to hate supplements.
Many claim that vitamin tablets are 'useless'. That
taking extra minerals to boost your health is a
'waste of money'. Almost every week there's
another article in the press questioning natural
supplements and deriding naturopaths as quacks.
And shock horror almost as many articles in
the papers are happy to trumpet the latest 'drug
breakthrough'.
It's as if an artificial supplement is automatically
superior to a natural one.
And yet look at this...
At the end of last year there was a study about
garlic, reported in the scientific journal BMC
Cardiovascular Disorders.
Dr Ried and her research team discovered that
'Garlic may lower blood pressure just as
effectively as drugs'.
And what did they use to carry out this research?
Daily garlic supplements.
Yes, you read that right... supplements.
Rather than being useless, ineffective or some
kind of alternative health conspiracy scam, these
powdered garlic supplements did very well
indeed.
In fact, they achieved similar effects to those
you'd get from wellknown antiblood pressure
drugs such as beta blockers and ACE inhibitors....
both of which come with some equally wellknown
side effects, including fatigue, cold hands and
dizziness.
I won't pretend of course that you can get any
instant 'cureall' in a pill, natural or otherwise. Like
all supplements, garlic capsules work best if you
try to eat healthily, stay active and try and lose a
bit of weight.
But before you cry 'I'M NOT IN THE MOOD FOR A
LECTURE!' don't panic.
I'm not going to be one of those people who bang
on about punishing yourself for gaining those evil
Christmas pounds... who preach about the joys of
detoxing... tell you to start analysing your own
poo... or guilttrip you into suffering a miserable
January on a starvation diet.
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Instead, here's an easier way
If you're serious about lowering blood pressure,
losing weight and giving your immune system a
boost, you should try this form of garlic
supplement.
Click here and take a look.
Get your garlic boost here
This supplement combines garlic - known for its
good effects on blood pressure - with honey and
vinegar. And I highly recommend it.
As avid readers of my Lemon Book and Honey
Garlic and Vinegar Miracle will know, a shot of
honey in the morning is a great boost to your
digestive system. It's also anti-bacterial and an
anti-inflammatory. A fantastic ingredient to get
into your body during the January months.
Vinegar has long been touted as a natural appetite
suppressant. So while the garlic is doing its work,
you should feel fewer blood sugar peaks and
crashes after eating.
This means you should find yourself less driven
by sudden hunger to reach for that sugary high-
carb snack left over from Christmas.
I should know because I've got loads of leftover
chocolate in the house. I don't want to throw it
away, but I know the indulgence MUST STOP.
Can I leave these goodies on a high shelf 'til
Easter?
Or will the kids go mad with frustration and build a
ladder out of toilet roll tubes to snatch them
during a midnight raid?
I just don't know.
Anyway... back to garlic.
This daily garlic supplement also comes with a
blend of herbs which help your digestive system
flush away toxins. This makes it a gentle way to
lose some weight and improve your general health
in January.
And it doesn't come with a guilt trip or any great
demands on your time. All the details are on this
website:
Get your garlic boost here
Okay, onto something slightly, but not entirely
different... |
The Frankenstein super-tomato of the future?
Here's something I found tucked away in the
newspapers last year, but haven't written about
yet.
According to some gushing reports, the boffins in
lab coats have developed a new breed of super-
tomato.
In The Daily Mail on October 27th, it was
described as looking 'like a cross between an
orange and a black pudding'.
While that sounds fairly dreadful, it actually
tastes and smells like your average, old fashioned
red tomato. The weird purple colouring comes
from the snapdragon flower. The genes from this
flower were combined with the tomato to create
a food extra rich in anti-oxidants which can help
prevent cancer, diabetes and heart disease.
Personally, I'm not too keen on filling my salad
bowl with these Frankenstein tomatoes... or
'Frankentomatoes'.
I suspect this little project being more to do with
science flexing its muscles.... and the media
looking for a good news story about genetically
modified food.
This way they can come back at those who
accuse GM food of lowering the nutritional values
of mass-farmed crops.
I'm one of them. See, by going for crops with
higher yields, you can get far more calories to the
world's population with genetic modification.
There's no dispute about that.
But by breeding crops to yield more, instead of
focussing on their nutritional quality, you erode
the health benefits of food. It means that those
calories supply less nutrition than they formerly
did.
If you're interested in this idea, you should get
hold of Michael Pollan's excellent book In
Defence of Food and check out pages 120-123.
He concludes: 'A diet based on quantity rather
than quality has ushered a new creature onto the
world stage: the human being who manages to be
both overfed and undernourished.'
So in my view the story of the super-enhanced
tomatoes is a distraction, not an example of a
brave new world of nutritionally powerful food.
I'm also pretty sure that eating a diet rich in locally
sourced, fresh, seasonal fruit and vegetables will
have the same cancer-fighting effect over time.
For instance, the same anti-oxidants in the
Frankentomato are also found in very high
amounts in blackberries and red grapes.
So try getting some of these into your diet
instead.
That said. I'll keep an eye on this story and see
how it develops. |
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