(Article originally published on "Il Sole 24 Ore")
The super-vegetables par excellence? Broccoli: thanks to the principles they contain, they can keep mitochondria healthy, the batteries of our cells, keeping them young and strong longer and consequently warding off health problems such as cancer and heart disease.
This was discovered by a group of researchers from the Institute of Food Research in Norwich (United Kingdom) who, for three months, monitored the health status and blood tests of people on three different diets, two of them based on broccoli.
Researchers had a first group of people follow a diet that included eating broccoli every day. A second group followed instead a diet based on a super-broccoli containing an enhanced amount of glucoraphanin, while the third group's menu did not include this particular vegetable.
The researchers thus discovered that the glucoraphanin of super-broccoli leads to improvements in the various chemical reactions that take place inside mitochondria, the "batteries" in the cells, keeping them young and healthy longer, and that the same benefits can be obtained by eating common broccoli:
"Mitochondria are very important. When they start to function poorly, they give rise to various age-related diseases. We think this is the reason why people who regularly eat broccoli stay in good health," the researchers explain.
The bad news comes for those who are not fans of this vegetable: according to the researchers, to get the same health benefits, those who do not eat broccoli regularly might need to eat three times more compared to those who include them in their weekly diet.
