Originally published January 3 2006
Fruit- and veggie-based recipes can help reduce inflammation
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
For Science News, health writer Janet Raloff shares a group of recipes aimed at lowering inflammation by integrating a greater amount of fruits and veggies into your diet.
Over the past few years, many studies have linked an increased risk of debilitating illness---such as heart disease or diabetes---with chronically elevated blood concentrations of a protein typically associated with inflammation.
The good news: A new trial finds that eating plenty of fruits and vegetables reduces concentrations of the worrisome protein.
The fresh veggies in this, Janet's Carrot Salad, are among those strongly associated with decreasing the body's production of a protein known as CRP.
Because this protein usually connotes inflammation, the new findings suggest that carrots might offer a dietary route to moderating potentially harmful, chronic inflammation.
In the new trial, researchers recruited people to eat a low-produce diet for a month and then increase that dietary component.
He points out that the recruits were not suffering from major infections but that some were overweight.
The study found that when the participants changed from a diet low in produce to one high in such foods, they experienced a significant drop in blood CRP.
However, no statistically significant relationship emerged between blood concentrations of any immune cell or of other components of the immune system and the number of servings of fruits and vegetables people had eaten.
The most startling impact of getting eight servings of produce and juice per day was a drop in blood CRP.
"Our intervention study is the first to show that [blood] CRP concentrations can be modulated by the consumption of vegetables and fruits," the authors report in the November American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
The researchers attribute the CRP decrease in the eight-servings-per-day group to increases in the men's consumption of foods rich in the carotenoids alpha- and beta-carotene---plant pigments with antioxidant properties.
In fact, the men's vitamin C concentrations didn't notably drop in the lowest-fruits-and-veggies group until about 8 weeks into the trial, he says, suggesting a person would have to eat a low-produce diet far longer than that to seriously deplete his or her stores of such nutrients.
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