Thursday, August 30, 2007

Vegetables damage your DNA, latest study headline!

Here we go again:

Less vegetables, less DNA damage, the key quote from this abstract is:

"African-Americans had ... lower self-reported intake of most antioxidants (than whites). Levels of oxidative DNA damage, measured using the alkaline comet assay, were lower in African-Americans than Whites"

I'll just repeat, plants make antioxidants to protect themselves from oxidation. They contain nasty pro oxidative substances, which drop on to your DNA whenever you eat those lovely plant based antioxidants.

The only lutein and zeaxanthin worth eating are from egg yolks!

Peter

3 comments:

  1. This could be confounded because of PUFA intake. Foods that are high in PUFAs tend to be high in Vitamin E. It's easy to make a case that PUFAs are bad, but I don't know about the anti-oxidants in dark chocolate, or berries, or citrus fruits. They saw an inverse association for lycopene and DNA damage. They saw a positive association with Vitamin E. They do not mention any correlation between Vitamin C and oxidative damage.

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  2. the sun, oxygen (called oxidation)also damage dna, yet no one would say stop breathing or stop sunbathing enough to make vita d (cholesterol sulfate?) which is a potent cancer figher and immune protectant. cells usually only get damaged when their cell membranes are compromised or they lack a lipid raft. otherwise no problem.
    rose

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  3. http://jn.nutrition.org/content/145/9/2006.abstract

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