Expert’s good oil on lowering health risks
A LEADING American nutrition says consuming just two tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil a day can reduce the risk of heart attack and cancer.
Associate Professor of medicine Mary Flynn who has a PhD in nutrition said using the oil to cook or with food reduced glucose in the body.
“When you have a level of blood glucose that’s too high you have extra glucose available to potentially feed cancer cells,” Dr Flynn, who spoke at a Boundary Bend Olives morning tea last week, said.
“Extra-virgin olive oil makes insulin (the chemical compound which stores glucose) work better.
“High glucose and insulin are related to worse prognoses of prostate, breast and colon and blood cancers.”
But she said the oil needed to be combined with meals containing vegetables and starch. A pilot study of 30 men conducted by Dr Flynn last year showed an extra-virgin olive oil-based diet reduced their insulin levels.
Dr Flynn, a teacher at Brown University in Rhode Island, said consuming extravirgin olive oil or using it to cook food lowered the risk of heart attack because it promoted efficient movement of cholesterol through the body.
“(In my research) what I have found very quickly was that people (using extra-virgin olive oil) said they were not hungry and they were losing weight. They were not hungry because there was (the right) fats in their meals.”