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Chapter 1: What are the health benefits of eating colorful fruits and vegetables?
When it comes to food, we've always been told to eat our greens, but maybe we need to pay more attention to our blues, our purples and our reds as well. New research led by Queen's University Belfast shows that regularly eating berries and other deeply coloured fruit and veg can significantly reduce the risk of heart disease, heart attacks and type 2 diabetes.
The research was led by Professor Aideen Cassidy, co-director of the Co-Centre for Sustainable Food Systems, at Queen's University Belfast. She joins me now on the line. Aideen, good morning to you. Good morning. The colour of our foods is not something most people probably give much thought to.
Chapter 2: Which specific foods are recommended for heart health?
Why is it important?
Well, our public health message is very much about eating more fruit and veg and we should be eating at least five to seven servings a day. But colour is important because not all fruit and vegetables have the same health benefits. And the current advice is really very generic and nonspecific.
And our research suggests that it's compounds in red, blue and purple coloured fruits and veg that are important for health.
OK, so what sort of food should we be looking at?
So it's actually very easy and simple to incorporate because it's foods like berries and plums, aubergines and anything that's red and blue in colour.
OK, so that's easy unless you're colourblind, obviously. Now, your research highlights compounds called flavonoids and specifically, and I'm going to make a mess of this, anthocyanins?
Anthocyanins, well done.
OK, all right. Well, I managed not to entirely mangle it, but what are they and what do they do for me?
So, I mean, we think that the flavonoids are probably the compounds that are responsible for some of the health benefits that we're seeing for fruits and vegetables, particularly these coloured fruits. But flavonoids are naturally occurring compounds in many of the plant foods that we eat in our normal diet.
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