London: The humble red onion, commonly used in India and Mediterranean cuisine, can help prevent heart disease.
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]
