Green foods green gold: unearthing the nutritional benefits of green foods - frontiers of science - Brief Article

Four billion years ago, during the Early Archean era, the first blue-green algae -- also called cyanobacteria -- were alive and well. At a time when the earth's atmosphere was a mix of nitrogen and carbon dioxide, in those early oxygen-bereft seas, algae "were in Fat City with the world to themselves, breathing carbon dioxide and making oxygen as a waste product" through photosynthesis, according to About.com.

Although oxygen bubbled up into the atmosphere about 2 billion years ago, it wasn't until 1,700 million years ago that the atmosphere became clear and oxygen-rich. Sea-dwelling cyanobacteria get their name from the bluish pigment, phycocyanin, which they use to capture light during photosynthesis. They also contain chlorophyll, the same photosynthetic pigment that terrestrial plants use.

It should be pointed out that not all blue-green algae are blue; some are red or pink. In fact, African flamingos get their pink color from eating a diet super-rich in the pinkish blue-green algae, spirulina.

THE RESEARCH

Studies underscore green foods' well established, health-enhancing effects, including: elimination of toxins (such as heavy metals), boosting levels of good bacteria (such as Lactobacilli) and boosting immunity.

Algae. Research behind algal foods includes a 2001 study in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry, in which test-tube simulated digestion' of spinach puree was used to look at absorption of beta-carotene and its relatives (carotenoids) and chlorophyll. The lead author, Ohio State University's M.G. Ferruzzi, says that this study is the first to demonstrate absorption of chlorophyll derivatives by human intestinal cells and "to support the potential importance" of chlorophyll as a health-promoting plant compound.

Chlorella. Daily supplementation with antioxidant-rich chlorella reduced high blood pressure, lowered LDL or "bad" cholesterol, accelerated wound healing and improved immune functions (in colitis and fibromyalgia) according to a March 2001 study by Virginia Commonwealth University's R.E. Merchant and C.A. Andre in Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine. They gave supplemental chlorella to the following people: 55 with fibromyalgia (pain and quality-of-life indicators), 33 with hypertension (diastolic blood pressure and blood fat indicators) and nine with ulcerative colitis (state-of-disease indicators). These results followed a 2000 study by Marchant that showed a 22 percent decrease in pain intensity in patients with moderately severe fibromyalgia after two months of daily chlorella supplementation.

Spirulina. A 1998 study by Brazilian researcher, M.S. Miranda, showed that that spirulina is also rich in antioxidants -- phenolic acids, alpha-carotene and beta-carotene -- compounds that have all demonstrated powerful free-radical antioxidant protection in test-tube and experimental models.

GETTING YOUR GREENS

So there are no more excuses for not getting your greens, and you can choose from a variety of sources. These include but are not limited to: chlorella, blue-green algae, spirulina from California or Hawaii, AFA blue-green algae (Aphanizomenon Flos Aquae), kelp, nori, green barley, wheat grass and alfalfa.

Nature must have learned something in 4 billion years, right?

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