Are Healthy Foods Really Effective?

Filed in archive Functional Foods on September 19, 2007

If you dig into the archives of this blog, there are just too much on functional or healthy foods that prevents from cancer to diabetes to arthritis and longer life. However, it is just recently that I rebumped this blog's categories to include functional foods, cancer, among others.

I've already covered tons of functional foods here, from coffee to dark chocolate, from pomegranate to green tea to red wine and much, much more. But are they really effective? Are they really beneficial to our health?

This article, Will it Save my Life? from chow.com which have itemized from red wine to raw milk if they're really healthy as studies claim.

Here's my favorite, on coffee:

The claim: The caffeinated beverage is full of antioxidants that provide health-protective benefits.

The proof: A new study from Finland shows that coffee may increase the risk of hypertension, but Harvard researchers found it reduced the risk of type 2 diabetes by more than 50 percent for men and nearly 30 percent for women who drank six or more cups a day.

Coffee drinkers may also be at lower risk of Parkinson's, colon cancer, liver cirrhosis, and gallstones. Three cups of coffee contain as much fiber as a raw apple. Its diuretic effects are mild, and easily compensated for by drinking water. And while coffee's effect on cardiovascular health is still unclear, caffeine consumption is no longer thought to lead to osteoporosis, as long as you get adequate calcium elsewhere (like from your café au lait).

Read the rest of Will it Save my Life?.