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Page 77
| and lycopene. As little as six potato chips containing 3 grams of Olestra can reduce the absorption of carotenoids by 38 percent. |
| Avoid canned foods. They are inferior to fresh in every way, including taste. Canned foods lack many important nutrients, and a significant percentage of cans (as high as 85 percent) are lined with a plastic coating. This is done to avoid flavor-altering chemical reactions between the cans and their contents, but the unfortunate result is that small amounts of an estrogenlike pollutant, called bisphenal-A (BPA), leach from the plastic coating into the food. Although the amount of BPA found in canned food is extremely low in comparison with the body's own production of estrogen, the problem lies in the body's struggle to break down BPA and metabolize it efficiently. |
| Harmful Cooking Methods |
| Frying, barbecuing, or broiling meat, poultry, or fish, especially when using polyunsaturated fats such as safflower or corn oil, can produce potential carcinogens called heterocyclic amines (HCAs), which have been linked with many forms of cancer. If you do occasionally fry food, use sesame seed oil, olive oil, or butter and do not cook to a point where your food becomes burnt or blackened. |
| Fats and Oils |
| Don't use margarine or any hydrogenated fats. Use mostly olive oil and sesame seed oil. Although butter and clarified butter are saturated animal fats, they are slow to oxidize and contain butyric acid, an anticancer agent. Therefore, they are acceptable in moderation. In Ayurvedic teaching, ghee (clarified butter) is said to protect food from deteriorating, possessing a special capacity for picking up the medicinal benefits of the herbs and carrying them into the body. Olive oil, a monounsaturated fat, does not oxidize easily and is also a good source of squalene, the most potent inhibitor of angiogenesis (see chapter 5). Sesame oil, both unroasted and roasted, contains antioxidants that inhibit lipid peroxidation. Among the antioxidant constituents in sesame oil are the lignanphenols sesamol, sesamolinol, and sesaminol. |
| Buy only unrefined cold-pressed polyunsaturated vegetable oils, but do not use them in cooking. When exposed to air, heat, and light, these oils oxidize |
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