Fighting Disease with Food

Ivanhoe Newswire
Tuesday, June 17, 2008; 4:15 AM

By Meghan Yost, Ivanhoe Health Correspondent

BALTIMORE, M.D. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- The saying, "an apple a day keeps the doctor away," has been ingrained in our minds since childhood, but is there any truth to the age old adage? Experts say sometimes food actually is the best medicine, and can even fight off deadly disease.

Virtually every disease has a proven food prevention, says Joseph E. Pissorno, Jr., N.D., editor-in-chief of Integrative Medicine: A Clinician's Journal and founding president of Bastyr University in Seattle. Whole foods, he says, offer the best protection. "Study after study show that people who eat a whole foods diet have a dramatically reduced incidence of disease," Dr. Pissorno told Ivanhoe.

So what is a whole food? "A whole food is just the way God or nature made it," James S. Gordon, M.D., founder and director of The Center for Mind-Body Medicine and a clinical professor at Georgetown University School of Medicine, explained to Ivanhoe. "The idea is basically to eat as many parts of the food as you possibly can." People throw away many parts of fruits and vegetables, like skin, which often contain the most nutrients, Dr. Gordon said. For example, the white part of oranges contains bioflavonoids, which help the body process vitamin C, and the leaves on broccoli contain concentrated amounts of nutrients, especially vitamin A.

Whole foods offer substantial health benefits. "For every serving of fruit or vegetable per day a person consumes, they get a four percent drop in cardiovascular disease risk," Dr. Pissorno said. "If a person consumes three servings per week of salmon, they reduce their risk of cardiovascular disease by 24 percent, and one-and-a-half ounces per day of walnuts reduces cardiovascular disease by 30 percent." In 2005, researchers found people who eat diets with the highest amount of folate reduce their risk of Alzheimer's by more than 60 percent. Black-eyed peas, wheat germ, liver, beef, asparagus, kidney beans and spinach are rich sources of folate.
 
Experts say whole foods are better than processed foods because they contain more nutrients and also because "the different ingredients in the food act synergistically to enhance each other's function," Dr. Gordan explained. For example, phytochemicals in the apple peel and apple flesh may provide the most powerful anti-cancer benefits when combined.