Answers (1)
*** Beneficial Vitamin A
When we are working at a computer terminal, our eyes constantly react to the bright and dark points of light appearing on the screen, notes Zdrowie, a Polish health magazine. The stronger these visual signals are, the more our eyes consume rhodopsin, a photosensitive pigment that enables us to see. Vitamin A is essential in the production of rhodopsin. According to Zdrowie, rich sources of vitamin A include liver and cod-liver oil. People who have to limit their fat and cholesterol intake can eat foods containing beta-carotene, which the body converts into vitamin A with the help of sunlight. Beta-carotene is present in yellow, orange, red, and green vegetables and such fruits as apricots, peaches, dried plums, melons, and mangoes.
*** Natural Vitamin-C Capsules
The azarole, also known as the jungle cherry, measures only about three quarters of an inch [2 cm] in diameter. Yet, this bittersweet fruit has 50 times more vitamin C than an orange and 100 times more than a lemon. Studies at the San Martín State University of Tarapoto, Peru, show that 100 grams of pulp from the most acid lemon has 44 milligrams of ascorbic acid, while the same amount of azarole has 4,600 milligrams. Just four of these natural fruit “capsules” provide the daily requirement of vitamin C for an adult. According to the newspaper El Comercio, efforts are being made to see if azarole, “an easily perishable fruit,” can be grown commercially as a substitute crop for coca.
*** Winter and Vitamin D
“Vitamin D is needed for absorption of calcium so that the mineral can take its place in bone and shore up the skeleton against fractures,” explains the Tufts University Health & Nutrition Letter. “Generally speaking, 90 percent of our vitamin D is made in our skin upon exposure to sunlight. But during the winter months, the sun’s rays are not strong enough to initiate vitamin D synthesis in northern climes. Worse still, hardly anyone middle-aged or older takes in the 10 percent of our vitamin D that the diet is supposed to provide.” The U.S. National Institutes of Health therefore recommends that during the winter in the northern latitudes, people over 50 in particular should increase their intake of vitamin D by eating foods such as fatty fish and taking cod-liver oil or by taking vitamin D supplements, though not to exceed 2,000 international units, 50 micrograms, per day.
*** Some Call Them Weeds
Seaweed is attractive not only to fish; in Japan some 200,000 tons of marine algae is served annually as food on the dinner table. “Sea vegetables are low-caloric, highly nutritious foods that help promote health and longevity,” says the book Vegetables From the Sea, by Japanese authors Seibin and Teruko Arasaki.
Consider, for example, one of the favorites, nori. When processed, this seaweed looks like sheets of dry, greenish-black paper and is prized for its aroma. Some 8,500 million sheets of it are consumed each year, which works out to about 70 letter-pad-sized sheets per person. What is so remarkable about nori? From 35 to 40 percent of it, by dry weight, is good protein that is easily digested. It is also a storehouse of vitamins. Compared to spinach, nori has 8 times more vitamin A, 9 times more vitamin B1, 15 times more vitamin B2, and 1.5 times more vitamin C. In addition, it is one of the few foods that is rich in vitamin B12, and it contains six other types of B vitamins.
Seaweeds are richer in minerals than almost any other food. It is calculated that from 7 to 38 percent of the seaweed’s dry weight is made up of “the minerals required by human beings, including calcium, sodium, magnesium, potassium, phosphorus, iodine, iron, and zinc.” For instance, wakame, another favorite, contains 13 times more calcium than milk does. Anemia sufferers will be interested to know that the iron content of edible marine algae is from two to more than ten times that of egg yolks or spinach. And the iodine in seaweeds may be the reason why the thyroid disease goiter is rare among the Japanese.