Alright, most of us would enjoy a serving of fruit a day. A fruit salad, cocktail or even just picking one from the fridge whenever we feel the craving. As for vegetables, well it’s a different story. Especially for the kids and even more so, if they have been raised in the world of fast food.
The movie “Super Size Me” was no laughing matter. Experts say America is getting fat, too fat now that we have to do something about it. That perhaps explains why the contestants at the recently concluded Miss Universe pageant were so slim and thin. I wonder though, how many of them are in good healthy condition?
Aside from worrying about grease-loaded food and all the heart risks they carry with them, we also worry about another more serious disease; cancer. Reading the title of this post is a dead giveaway. Need I say it again?
Or perhaps you’d listen more to Dr. Rui Hai Liu, Cornell associate professor of food science who just recently found out that fruit peelings, particularly of apples contain dozens of natural compounds that are active in fighting cancer cells, and thereby preventing their development in the human body.
“We found that several compounds have potent anti-proliferative activities against human liver, colon and breast cancer cells and may be partially responsible for the anti-cancer activities of whole apples,” says Rui Hai Liu, Cornell associate professor of food science.
So it’s all in the skin, I mean in the peel? I remember when as a kid, whenever I’ll eat grapes I’d go through the trouble of peeling them one by one before eating them. My mother would tell me not to and eat the grapes with their peels intact as most of the good stuff can be found in the skin. She said the same about the other fruits that I was fond of peeling, apples and pears. It now turns out that my mom was right after all and Dr. Rui Hai Liu has just confirmed it.
In those peelings triterpenoids were the indentified compounds that do most of the anti-cancer work in the human body. Along with previously discovered compounds like the phytochemicals, these compounds are natural substances that help us prevent cancer and live longer healthier lives.
Photo by .imelda