What are the top four foods you can eat for optimum health?
Our DNA contains all the instructions for building every single part of the body but DNA itself is only half the story. DNA is covered in chemical tags called the epigenome. These tags react to signals from the outside world such as diet and stress. Your rapidly changing environment can influence the development of chronic health problems such as obesity, inflammatory disorders, cancer, type II diabetes and neurodegenerative disorders. One way of preventing this is to eat foods which enhance our methylation. Methyl groups are important epigenetic tags that silence genes and can prevent diseases from being ‘switched on’. The top foods that contain methyl groups and affect our epigenome are:
Broccoli – turns on anti-cancer genes and enhances liver detoxification
Liver – rich in Folic acid, B6 and B12, the top methyl nutrients (if you can’t face plain liver, mix chopped liver into minced beef or buy dried liver powder)
Garlic – anti viral, anti bacterial and turns on anti-cancer genes
Spinach (and leafy greens) – rich in folic acid and magnesium and breaks down toxic by products