In addition to vitamins, minerals and fiber, fruits and vegetables contain phytonutrients, believed to come from the com-pounds that give these foods their vibrant colors. These phytonutrients provide a wide range of health benefits, includ-ing supporting a healthy immune system.

A new study, America’s Phytonutrient Report, found eight in 10 Americans are missing out on the health benefits of a diet rich in colorful fruits and veggies, resulting in a phytonutrient gap. The report looked at fruit and vegetable consumption in five color categories, specifically green, red, white, blue/purple and yellow/orange, and the phytonutrients found in each color category.

Eating a variety of colorful fruits and vegetables is one way to help keep you and your family healthy. Foods in the red category are especially helpful to our immune systems, in addition to supporting heart health. Tomatoes, pomegranate, red cabbage, cranberries, even pink grapefruit provide the phytonutrients lycopene and ellagic acid.

The health benefits of foods in the yellow/orange category support a health immune function too…along with vision and heart health. And they help maintain skin hydration—important as we head into these cold, dry months. These foods pro-vide beta-carotene, alpha-carotene, lutein, quercetin and other phytonutrients that can be converted into Vitamin A. Deli-cious and nutritious yellow/orange fruits and vegetables available now include: carrots, squash, sweet potatoes and pi-neapple.

For optimal health, aim to eat two foods from each of the 5 color categories – green, red, white, blue/purple and orange/yellow – for a total of 10 servings each day. A few of Amy Hendel’s favorite tips to help fill phytonutrient gaps:

1. Instead of tossing out fruits or veggies that look a bit wilted or bruised, use them. Add chopped vegetables to canned soup. Bake cored apples with a bit of cinnamon, a sprinkle of raisins and lemon zest. Or, perk up a muf-fin recipe with by adding an over-riped banana.
2. When baking omega-3 rich fish, top with tomatoes, onions and other veggies, brush with olive oil and sprinkle with oregano, red pepper flakes and rosemary. Herbs and spices are packed with antioxidants too.
3. Pureed fruit added to baking recipes gives moisture AND phytonutrients, while cutting fat. Try pureed plums in brownies and mashed cherries in meatloaf or hamburgers.
4. Finally, while eating whole fruits and vegetables is the goal, a natural, plant-based supplement like those made by Nutrilite can help fill phytonutrient gaps in your diet.

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More information about phytonutrients and the phytonutrient gap , including America’s Phytonutrient Report and simple tips for coloring up your diet, can be found at http://www.pwrnewmedia.com/2009/nutrilite90921nmr/index.html

by Sheryl Walters, citizen journalist

(NaturalNews) Spicy foods add an incredible amount of flavour to food. As ethnic foods become abundant, chilli and spicy food is increasingly popular. The good news is that adding spice to our food has a range of benefits for our health and wellbeing.

Chillies have long been used in traditional medicine, probably first by the Aztecs. In Russia, a drink called Nastoyka (made from chillies soaked in vodka) has also been taken as a healing remedy.

Reduced Cancer Death Rate

Scientists have proven that capsaicin, which is responsible for the burning sensation when we eat chillies, can kill cancer cells, indicating that people could at least prevent the onset of cancer by eating spicy food. This is because it is a natural antioxidant, meaning that it defends against disease causing toxins.

According to the World Health Organization, countries where diets are traditionally high in capsaicin have significantly lower cancer death rates for men and women than in countries where little spicy food is consumed.

Dr Timothy Bates who made the discovery, says that “This is incredibly exciting and may explain why people living in countries like Mexico and India, who traditionally eat a diet which is very spicy, tend to have lower incidences of many cancers that are prevalent in the western world.”

According to Bates, capsaicin attacks the power house of the tumour, thus killing the cancerous tumour cells and reducing tumour growth without harming the surrounding healthy cells. Capsaicin has been found to inhibit the growth of cancer cells in laboratory studies.

Prevents Dangerous Blood Clots

As well as preventing cancer, researchers have also noticed that people who consume large amounts of chilli peppers experienced a lower incidence of thrombo-embolism, or potentially dangerous blood clots.

Scientists have studied the medical records of countries where spicy foods are regularly consumed, and found that people who eat a diet high in chillies experience a much lower incidence of blood clotting diseases. It has now been scientifically proven that capsicum is able to break down blood clots.

Other Benefits of Hot Super Foods Include:

- Chillies are anti inflammatory, so they prevent and relieve arthritis.

- Lower Blood Pressure Naturally- Going hot increases the circulatory system and maintains strong cell walls.

- Chillies are a fantastic remedy for Cluster Headaches and Migraines, and can be put on the temples to sooth the pain. Some researchers are even investigating the effects of snorting it up the nose!

- A mood lifter, depression fighter, and powerful stress reliever. Capsicum increases endorphins and other mood elevating, “feel good” substances.

- Chillies can help protect us from common winter conditions. It may reduce flu symptoms, sinusitis, and respiratory problems. It opens everything up, makes you sweat, and boosts the immune system.

- A powerful remedy for Herpes Simplex flare -ups. You can rub a hot chilli straight on the skin to watch it disappear! Now available in the form of a prescription drug, capsicum ointment is applied to the skin to aid in controlling the pain associated with herpes zoster, also known as shingles.

- A natural muscle relaxant and pain reliever. We all know that putting something hot and spicy on muscular pain offers relief. Again, a hot chilli pepper straight on the skin will do the trick. There are also a number of creams that have capsicum in them to sooth and heal painful muscles.

- Chillies have been shown to have a positive effect on an overactive bladder and on people who have incontinence. It can block contractions that cause unpredictable loss of urine.

- Spicy foods can heal psoriasis and other skin conditions. Topical capsaicin creams have been prescribed to dry up psoriasis patches.

- Studies have shown that ulcers respond well to chillies. Hot peppers inhibit the growth of H. Pylori, the bacteria that causes certain kinds of ulcers.

- Capsicum is good for the skin because it is anti inflammatory and improves circulation.
- Spicy foods improve libido and sex drive.

So if you can handle your food hot, turn up the notch and enjoy the amazing healing benefits and added taste of spicy foods.

Also see:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/62447…

Reprinted from NaturalNews.

Click here to view the embedded video.

By Dr. Michael Greger

Most of us know the flu-influenza-as a nuisance disease, an annual annoyance to be endured along with taxes, dentists, and visits with the in-laws. Why worry about influenza when there are so many more colorfully gruesome viruses out there like Ebola? Because influenza is scientists’ top pick for humanity’s next killer plague. Up to 60 million Americans come down with the flu every year. What if it suddenly turned deadly?

H5N1, the new killer strain of avian influenza spreading out of Asia, has only killed about a hundred people as of mid-2006. In a world in which millions die of diseases like malaria, tuberculosis, and AIDS, why is there so much concern about bird flu?

Because it’s happened before. Because an influenza pandemic in 1918 became the deadliest plague in human history, killing up to 100 million people around the world. Because the 1918 flu virus was likely a bird flu virus. Because that virus made more than a quarter of all Americans ill and killed more people in 25 weeks than AIDS has killed in 25 years-yet in 1918, the case mortality rate was less than 5%. H5N1, on the other hand, has officially killed half of its human victims.

H5N1 took its first human life in Hong Kong in 1997 and has since rampaged west to Russia, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe. It remains almost exclusively a disease of birds, but as the virus has spread, it has continued to mutate. It has developed greater lethality and enhanced environmental stability, and has begun taking more species under its wing. Influenza viruses don’t typically kill mammals like rodents, but experiments have shown that the latest H5N1 mutants can kill 100% of infected mice, practically dissolving their lungs. The scientific world has never seen anything like it. We’re facing an unprecedented outbreak of an unpredictable virus.

Currently in humans, H5N1 is good at killing, but not at spreading. There are three essential conditions necessary to produce a pandemic. First, a new virus must arise from an animal reservoir, such that humans have no natural immunity to it. Second, the virus must evolve to be capable of killing human beings efficiently. Third, the virus must succeed in jumping efficiently from one human to the next. For the virus, it’s one small step to man, but one giant leap to mankind. So far, conditions one and two have been met in spades. Three strikes and we’re out. If the virus triggers a human pandemic, it will not be peasant farmers in Vietnam dying after handling dead birds or raw poultry-it will be New Yorkers, Parisians, Londoners, and people in every city, township, and village in the world dying after shaking someone’s hand, touching a doorknob, or simply inhaling in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Mathematical models suggest that it might be possible to snuff out an emerging flu pandemic at the source if caught early enough, but practical considerations may render this an impossibility. Even if we were able to stamp it out, as long as the same underlying conditions remain, the virus would presumably soon pop back up again, just as it has in the past.

This book explores what those underlying conditions are. The current dialogue surrounding avian influenza speaks of a potential H5N1 pandemic as if it were a natural phenomenon-like hurricanes, earthquakes, or even a “viral asteroid on a collision course with humanity” -which we couldn’t hope to control. The reality, however, is that the next pandemic may be more of an unnatural disaster of our own design.

Since the mid-1970s, previously unknown diseases have surfaced at a pace unheard of in the annals of medicine-more than 30 new diseases in 30 years, most of them newly discovered viruses. The concept of “emerging infectious diseases” used to be a mere curiosity in the field of medicine; now it’s an entire discipline. Where are these diseases coming from?

According to the Smithsonian Institution, there have been three great disease transitions in human history. The first era of human disease began with the acquisition of diseases from domesticated animals, such as tuberculosis, measles, the common cold-and influenza. The second era came with the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries, resulting in an epidemic of the so-called “diseases of civilization,” such as cancer, heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. We are now entering the third age of human disease, which started around 30 years ago-described by medical historians as the age of “the emerging plagues.” Never in medical history have so many new diseases appeared in so short a time. An increasingly broad consensus of infectious disease specialists has concluded that nearly all of the ever more frequent emergent disease episodes in the United States and elsewhere over the past few years have, in fact, come to us from animals. Their bugs are worse than their bite.

In poultry, bird flu has gone from an exceedingly rare disease to one that crops up every year. The number of serious outbreaks in the first few years of the 21st century has already exceeded the total number of outbreaks recorded for the entire 20th century. Bird flu seems to be undergoing evolution in fast-forward.

The increase in chicken outbreaks has gone hand-in-hand with increased transmission to humans. A decade ago, human infection with bird flu was essentially unheard of. Since H5N1 emerged in 1997, though, chicken viruses H9N2 infected children in China in 1999 and 2003, H7N2 infected residents of New York and Virginia in 2002 and 2003, H7N7 infected people in the Netherlands in 2003, and H7N3 infected poultry workers in Canada in 2004 and a British farmer in 2006. The bird flu virus in the Netherlands outbreak infected more than a thousand people. What has changed in recent years that could account for this disturbing trend?

All bird flu viruses seem to start out harmless to both birds and people. In its natural state, the influenza virus has existed for millions of years as an innocuous, intestinal, waterborne infection of aquatic birds such as ducks. If the true home of influenza viruses is the gut of wild waterfowl, the human lung is a long way from home. How does a waterfowl’s intestinal bug end up in a human cough? Free-ranging flocks and wild birds have been blamed for the recent emergence of H5N1, but people have kept chickens in their backyards for thousands of years, and birds have been migrating for millions.

In a sense, pandemics aren’t born-they’re made. H5N1 may be a virus of our own hatching coming home to roost. According to a spokesperson for the World Health Organization, “The bottom line is that humans have to think about how they treat their animals, how they farm them, and how they market them-basically the whole relationship between the animal kingdom and the human kingdom is coming under stress.” Along with human culpability, though, comes hope. If changes in human behavior can cause new plagues, changes in human behavior may prevent them in the future.

This introduction to the book “Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching” was reprinted with permission from the author.

About the author:

Michael Greger, M.D., is Director of Public Health and Animal Agriculture at The Humane Society of the United States. An internationally recognized lecturer, he has presented at the Conference on World Affairs, the National Institutes of Health, and the International Bird Flu Summit, among countless other symposia and institutions, and was invited as an expert witness in defense of Oprah Winfrey at the infamous “meat defamation” trial.

Dr. Greger is a graduate of the Cornell University School of Agriculture and the Tufts University School of Medicine. His other books include Carbophobia.

All of the proceeds Dr. Greger receives from his books and speaking engagements are donated to charity.

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Read the book online here.