Researchers at the Chinese University in Hong Kong found that red onion helps remove bad cholesterol from the body which is responsible for heart attacks and strokes. It also retains the body's good cholesterol that in turn helps protect against heart disease, they said. Zhen Yu Chen, who led the research, said, "Despite extensive research on onions, little is known of how their consumption interacts with human genes and proteins involved in cholesterol metabolism within the body."
For their study, the scientists fed crushed-up red onions to hamsters who had all been put on a high-cholesterol diet. They found that after eight weeks, levels of bad cholesterol, or low density lipoprotein (LDL), had dropped by an average of 20 %. But over the same time period there was no reduction in the hamsters' high cholesterol levels, also known as high density lipoprotein (HDL), they said.
Onions have long been known to have many health benefits including preventing cancer, heart disease and common coughs and colds. It has been found that some parts of the world where onion consumption is high have even been shown to have much lower cancer rates.
For example in Georgia, the US, where the small, sweet Videlia onion is grown the number of stomach cancer diagnoses are a half the average for the rest of the cancer. In China, where people eat more onions and garlic than anywhere else in the world, the risk of stomach cancer is 40 % lower than average. PTI
[The Times of India, October 9, 2010]
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