One Fruit Ranks As Best Cancer Fighting Food

Researchers have shown a diet containing dried plums can positively affect microbiota, also referred to as gut bacteria, throughout the colon, helping reduce the risk of colon cancer. Colon cancer is the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the U.S. when men and women are considered separately, and the second-leading cause when the figures are combined. But if you eat dried plumps the risk for this cancer is way too much lower.

Research

Researchers presented a study at the Biology Conference in Massachusetts and evaluated how a diet containing dried plums affected microbiota throughout the colon and risks of colon cancer. Dried plums appeared to promote retention of beneficial microbiota and microbial metabolism throughout the colon, and, by doing so, reduce the incidence of colon cancer in rats. Rats on the dried-plum diet also had reduced numbers of aberrant crypts, which are signs of precancerous lesions that may be an indicator for future cancer development.

How dried plums may lower your risk of colon cancer 

Dried plums are rich in potassium, fiber, and phytochemicals, including antioxidants, all of which may help lower your risk of chronic disease. However, it’s dried plums’ influence on the bacteria in your colon that may be most impressive of all. This research explored the potential cancer-protective properties of dried plums using a well-established rat model of colon cancer. Dried plums contain phenolic compounds, which have multiple effects on our health, including their ability to serve as antioxidants that can neutralize the oxidant effect of free radicals that can damage our DNA.

Benefits from eating dried plumps

Cancer risk now is much lower and can be prevented, because of these abilities of dried plumps:

• Maintenance of microbial metabolism patterns in the colon
• Reduced aberrant crypt foci numbers, which are a huge sign of the development of cancer
• Retention of micro biota in the gut

Prunes or Plumps?

According to experts, all prunes can be considered plumps, but not all plumps can be considered prunes.

Prunes are the dried version of European plums. Sweet with a deep taste and a sticky chewy texture, prunes are not only fun to eat but they are also highly nutritious.  A plum’s high sugar content allows it to be dried without fermentation. Research has shown that customers in the U.S. respond more favorably to the name dried plums as opposed to prunes. Dried plums, like all dried fruit, drain their water content by one of three methods: natural drying, sun drying, and dehydrators. So if dried plums are just plums with the water taken out of them, why do they lower our colon cancer risk while fresh plums don’t? Not only does dried plum retain both soluble and insoluble fiber from its original form, but it also contains more sorbitol than fresh plums. Sorbitol is an unfermentable sugar that increases our levels of desirable intestinal microorganisms, such as phenolic compounds.

 

Source : http://www.stethnews.com