Preventative foods

'An apple a day keeps the doctor away...', so the saying goes. Which other foods help guard against common health problems?

Our relationship with food is complex. While food has always been regarded as 'fuel', our emotional responses to food and eating have been the subject of much interest.

What we must also consider, when making food choices, are the other health benefits of certain types of food. Find out which foods can help boost your well-being and protect against common health problems.

Fruit and vegetables
It's almost impossible to overstate the benefits of the recommended five daily portions of fruit and vegetables. They contain essential vitamins such as A, B, C, E and folic acid, and minerals such as calcium, potassium, manganese, zinc and selenium. Some fruit and vegetables are also good fibre sources.

They're a good source of antioxidants, which reduce the risk of certain cancers and heart disease, and also have other ingredients known as phytochemicals, which may also reduce the risk of coronary heart disease. Within the fruit and vegetable kingdom, broccoli is being hailed as a bit of a superstar, with recent research suggesting that eating broccoli daily can increase life expectancy by eight years! Tomatoes and other red foods, such as red peppers and watermelon, are also particularly healthy.

Tea
The same studies that praised broccoli also suggested that regular tea-drinking could add four years to life expectancy. Green tea appears to be most beneficial, due to the high concentrations of antioxidants that it contains. The drying and processing of green tea to make black tea results in much of the benefit being lost, with black tea having only 10% of the antioxidant power of green tea. However, it is still one of the healthiest daily drinks. Research suggests that tea helps to protect against some forms of cancer, coronary heart disease and stroke.

In addition to the antioxidant benefits, three cups of tea with semi-skimmed milk provides 15% of the daily calcium requirement and 10% of the folic acid and zinc requirements. It also provides vitamins B1, B2 and B6, the mineral manganese, and is also a natural source of fluoride.

Fibre
Dietary fibre has an important role in regulating bowel habit, with low-fibre diets being one of the most common reasons for developing constipation. In addition to this important function, fibre also helps to control blood sugar levels, and helps to reduce the absorption of fat from the diet, so reducing cholesterol and helping with weight control. It is widely thought that dietary fibre may reduce the risk of colon cancer, although this is still under review.

The best sources of dietary fibre are wholegrain products, pulses, nuts and some fruits such as figs, apricots and prunes. Some vegetables, such as broccoli and root vegetables, are also fibre-rich.

Garlic
Garlic has been famous for its medicinal properties for centuries. It has been proven to have anti-bacterial, anti-parasitic, anti-blood-clotting, cholesterol-lowering and blood-pressure-lowering effects. When garlic is crushed or chopped, an enzyme reaction produces the medically important and characteristically smelling compound called allicin. Allicin is responsible for the anti-infection properties of garlic, and is lost when garlic is cooked. Whether the other beneficial properties of garlic are due to allicin is strongly debated, but it is probable that raw garlic is best. One to three cloves of fresh, raw garlic daily is generally recommended.

Fish
For at least 10 years it has been strongly recommended that we should eat at least two portions of fish a week, of which at least one should be oily fish (such as herring, mackerel, salmon, trout, tuna or sardine). However, the current average intake of oily fish in UK adults is one third of a portion per week.

All fish provide a very low-fat source of protein. In addition to this, oily fish provide an important fatty acid, EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid). Studies have shown that people such as Inuits, who consume large amounts of EPA, have very low rates of heart disease, in spite of their high-fat, high-cholesterol diets. It is thought that EPA reduces the risk of coronary heart disease by reducing the stickiness of blood platelets (which reduces the risk of blood clots), and by favourably altering the levels of several fats in the blood.

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