Newindpress
Bangalore, Nov 9: The next time you see a hawker selling groundnuts boiled in his shells in lightly salted water, make a grab for it.
Scientists have discovered that boiled groundnuts can keep cancer, diabetes and coronary heart disease at bay, besides ensuring a healthy menstrual cycle in women.
Scientists in Alabama, USA, mainly conducted the study to evaluate the effect of boiling and oil-dryroasting on groundnuts, but their findings may have a deep impact on India where diabetes and coronary heart disease have reached epidemic proportions.
Scientist Llyod Walker and his team, found that boiled groundnuts, which is also a favourite snack among South Carolina’s population, contained four times more isoflavones than raw groundnuts or oil and dry-roasted ones.
Isoflavones are natural antioxidants comparable to that of the well-known antioxidant vitamin E. An antioxidant counters the negative effect of oxygen by neutralising the damaging effects of free radicals (natural byproducts of cell metabolism) which cause cell damage. Cellular damage leads to aging and various health problems.
Isoflavones prevent freeradical damage to the DNA (which kick-starts a cancer) and act against cancer cells in a way similar to common cancer- treating drugs. Population-based studies in the USA have shown a 54 per cent reduced risk of breast cancer among women who regularly consumed isoflavones through foods enriched by them.
Isoflavones are found to be the active ingredients responsible for improving cholesterol profile, thus reducing the chances of coronary heart disease.
The chemical structure of isoflavones is very similar to that of our own estrogen, a group of hormones produced by the ovary, placenta, and testes that stimulate secondary sexual characteristics in males and females.
Estrogen plays an important role in a woman’s menstrual cycle. Due to this similarity in structure, they can interfere with the action of our own estrogen. Moreover, isoflavones can compete with estrogen for the same receptor sites to decrease the health risks of excess estrogen.
If during menopause the body’s natural level of estrogen drops, isoflavones can compensate this by binding to the same receptor, easing menopause symptoms as a result.