heber

Today, we conclude this series by offering our readers an advisory from one of the world's leading experts on the role of nutrition and specifically berries for gaining health.

BD: Dr. Heber, if there's one message from your book on The Color Code that you could offer to readers of The Berry Doctor's Journal, what would it be?

DH: Today's dietary problems are an accident of nature. Over thousands of years, our ancestors evolved on a diverse plant-based diet of dozens of natural food sources, but the typical American diet has changed tremendously just over the past 100 years.

Plant food preferences in the industrialized world now are limited to just a few, such as potatoes, apples and wheat. We seem to be eating more unhealthy foods in larger amounts just because it's the cheapest, easiest way to eat!

Today, there's a much wider variety of nutrient-rich berries, fruits and vegetables available to us. When you consider the impact on lifestyle and high cost of treating illnesses that could be avoided by eating more colorful and nutritious foods, the public needs to make changes for healthier living.

BD: Your research at UCLA is known for its focus on cancer that may be preventable through a colorful diet of plant foods. What are a few highlights of this science?

DH: One of the most important concepts from our research is that cancer may originate from inflammation mechanisms which are preventable through a color-rich diet.

We recently published a paper showing that extracts of six popularly consumed berries --blackberry, black raspberry, blueberry, cranberry, red raspberry and strawberry -- were promising for their contents of anthocyanins, flavonols, flavanols, ellagitannins, gallotannins, proanthocyanidins, and phenolic acids.

Collectively called "phenolics", these berry extracts showed ability to inhibit the growth of human oral, breast, colon, and prostate tumors in vitro. With increasing concentration of berry extract, we found increasing inhibition of tumors.

The berry phenolicss were also evaluated for their ability to stimulate apoptosis (increased natural death rate) of the colon cancer cells that seem to be regulated by the inflammation enzyme, COX-2. Black raspberry and strawberry phenolics showed the most significant anti-cancer effects specifically in tumor cells sensitive to COX-2.

BD: And your studies about how a colorful diet may help people who are overweight?

DH: For the first time in human history, the numbers of overweight and underweight individuals are about the same, at 2.1 billion each.

Along with the current worldwide obesity epidemic is the explosion of obesity- and overweight-related health problems, including diabetes and the metabolic syndrome, musculoskeletal disorders,cardiovascular disease, pulmonary disorders, and certain forms of cancer. Obesity and overweight account for a significant percentage of overall health care costs and contribute significantly to morbidity and mortality in the United States and around the world.

The Color Code, along with sufficient protein and calorie intake, is the simplest method possible to lose weight while improving your intake of color-associated antioxidants.

BD: Is there a good summary from your work on how any person can identify the right food colors?

DH: Yes, In 2004, I published a review article in the Journal of Postgraduate Medicine 2004 Apr-Jun;50(2):145-9, entitled, "Vegetables, fruits and phytoestrogens in the prevention of diseases." The abstract reads...

The intake of 400-600 g/d of fruits and vegetables is associated with reduced incidence of many common forms of cancer, and diets rich in plant foods are also associated with a reduced risk of heart disease and many chronic diseases of aging. These foods contain phytochemicals that have anti-cancer and anti-inflammatory properties which confer many health benefits.

Many phytochemicals are colorful, and recommending a wide array of colorful fruits and vegetables is an easy way to communicate increased diversity of intake to the consumer.

For example, red foods contain lycopene, the pigment in tomatoes, which is localized in the prostate gland and may be involved in maintaining prostate health, and which has also been linked with a decreased risk of cardiovascular disease. Green foods, including broccoli, Brussels sprouts and kale, contain glucosinolates which have also been associated with a decreased risk of cancer. Garlic and other white-green foods in the onion family contain allyl sulphides which may inhibit cancer cell growth.

Other bioactive substances in green tea and soybeans have health benefits as well.

Consumers are advised to ingest one serving of each of the seven colour groups daily, putting this recommendation within the United States National Cancer Institute and American Institute for Cancer Research guidelines of five to nine servings per day.

Grouping plant foods by colour provides simplification, but it is also important as a method to help consumers make wise food choices and promote health.

Red-Purple, including dark grapes, red wine, dark grape juice, prunes, dark berries, and red apples.

Orange, includes carrots, mangos, apricots, cantaloupes, pumpkin, squash and yams.

DH: Try changes in your diet by switching your grocery shopping and meal preparation from empty off-white to well-colored. You can begin with some simple substitutions, e.g.,

It doesn't really matter if you get something from every color group each day. Just eat as wide a variety of colored foods as possible and try to get the recommended 5-9 daily servings of colorful produce.

A serving is not as large as it sounds -- it's only about as much as you can hold in the palm of a cupped hand.

Berries are an easy way of getting these pigments. Of course, the more fruit and vegetables you eat, the more of these crucial compounds you'll absorb.

David Heber, MD, PhD, FACP, FACN
Professor, UCLA Department of Medicine - Division of Clinical Nutrition, at the David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA, and UCLA School of Public Health; Director, UCLA Center for Human Nutrition; Director, NIH Center for Dietary Supplement Research in Botanicals (CDSRB); Director, NCI-funded Clinical Nutrition Research Unit; Vice Chair, UCLA Collaborative Centers for Integrative Medicine; Member, UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center.

After graduating from UCLA Magna Cum Laude in Chemistry in 1969 and from Harvard Medical School in 1973, Dr. Heber completed his internship at Beth Israel Hospital and his residency and fellowship training at Harbor General Hospital in Torrance, California. He completed his Ph.D. in Physiology at UCLA in 1978.

Dr. Heber has been on the faculty of the UCLA School of Medicine since 1978 and is the founding Chief of the Division of Clinical Nutrition in the Department of Medicine as well as the founding Director of the UCLA Center for Human Nutrition at UCLA. Dr. Heber is board-certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolism by the American Board of Internal Medicine and in Clinical Nutrition by the American Board of Nutrition. He also directs the NIH Nutrition and Obesity Training Grants at UCLA. Dr. Heber is a Director of the American Board of Nutrition and past chair of the Education Committee of the American Society of Clinical Nutrition.

He has written over 70 peer-reviewed scientific articles and 25 book chapters, and two professional texts: Dietary Fat, Lipids, Hormones and Tumorigenesis and Nutritional Oncology, a 50-chapter text published by Academic Press in 1999. Dr. Heber's primary areas of interest are in nutrition, botanical dietary supplements and the role of phytochemicals and botanical dietary supplements in the prevention and treatment of common forms of cancer and cardiovascular disease. He has written reviews and articles on dietary supplements in cancer and cardiovascular disease.

In particular, he has published research on the use of botanical supplements in lowering cholesterol for heart disease prevention through the recently funded CDSRB and has collaborated on studies of the botanical dietary supplement PC-SPES in prostate cancer.

Dr. Heber is included in the 2000 listing of "The Best Doctors in America," based on a survey of over 35,000 doctors throughout the nation, and is listed in Who's Who in America for 2001. He has written three books for the public: Natural Remedies for a Healthy Heart (Avery Publishing Group 1998), The Resolution Diet (Avery Publishing Group 1999), and What Color is Your Diet? (Harper Collins/Regan Books 2001).

A 4-part series of questions & answers on the goji berry!

Everything you'd want to know about

wolfberry (goji, Lycium barbarum L.),

the 2007 superfruit of the year!

Courtesy, Timpanogos Nursery

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