Disease-Fighting Factors Fill Sustainably Farmed Foods
Published February 22nd, 2007
Food scientist Alyson E. Mitchell, PhD, and colleagues at the University of California, Davis, study compounds called flavonoids. Recent evidence suggests that these micronutrients play important roles in preventing cancer and heart disease.
Flavonoids protect plants, too. They protect against UV radiation. They fight fungal and bacterial infections. And they taste awful to pests. Plants getting chewed by bugs start making lots of flavonoids. Mitchell reasoned that plants sprayed with insect- and fungus-killing chemicals wouldn’t make as many flavonoids as organically grown plants. So her research team compared flavonoid levels in fruits and vegetables farmed in the same place but by different methods.
Sure enough, organic berries and corn had significantly more flavonoids than those grown by conventional methods. And a third method — called sustainable farming — yielded even higher flavonoid levels. Sustainable farming is sort of a cross between organic and conventional farming. Like conventional farming, sustainably farmed crops are treated with synthetic fertilizers. But pesticides are used sparingly.
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