The New Super Food

Hello welcome to Entertainment! I'm Jackie Dalton. If you're someone
　　who is quite careful about what you eat and likes to be healthy, then you
　　might want to find out about what's being hailed as the latest super food.
　　A 'super food' is a term which we're hearing more and more these days to
　　describe food that's very good for you. So far, the 'super foods' category
　　has included blueberries, nuts, tomatoes and garlic. But new research has
　　found that yet another type of food deserves to be added to the list. And
　　that's watercress. Watercress is a small leafy green plant that grows in
　　water and tastes quite strong. It's often used in salads.
　　Ian Rowland
　　Watercress has been known for a long time to have beneficial properties.
　　Jackie:  Ian Rowland is a Professor of Human Nutrition and has just done a study
　　that shows watercress is very good for us. As he just said, it has
　　'beneficial properties' - a term we often hear to describe things which are
　　good for our health - 'beneficial properties'. Watercress has been used for
　　medicinal purposes for many years… that's another expression: if
　　something is used 'for medicinal purposes' it's used to treat or to prevent
　　illness. So, since when is watercress known to have been used for
　　medicinal purposes? Listen to find out.
　　Ian Rowland
　　Watercress has been known for a long time to have beneficial properties. It's been
　　known since the times of the Greeks, the Ancient Greeks that it has been used for
　　medicinal purposes
　　Jackie:  Did you get that answer? Watercress has been used for medicinal
　　purposes since the times of the Ancient Greeks – a very long time indeed!
　　Professor Rowland and his team carried out an experiment on volunteers
　　to see what effect eating watercress would have on them. Two questions
　　for you to answer this time: how many volunteers took part in the
　　experiment and how much watercress did they eat each day?
　　Ian Rowland
　　We recruited 60 volunteers, who ate a bag of watercress – one bag a day. And these
　　were a nice cross-section of people, they were 19 to 55 years old, they ate it for 8 weeks.
　　Jackie:  Did you get those answers? They recruited sixty volunteers for the
　　experiment and they each had to eat a bag a day. Ian said they had a
　　cross-section of the population, which means it was a group of peopl
　　that was typical of the population as whole, with a range of ages,
　　lifestyles, races and so on.
　　BBC Learning English
　　Before we hear from Ian again, a few bits of language that might be
　　useful to you:
　　To analyse something – means to examine it very closely
　　A sample – a sample is a small part or amount of something that's
　　examined in order to find out something about the whole, doctors
　　sometimes look at blood samples to find out what is wrong with patients.
　　DNA – is a substance that carries information in the cells of the body and
　　controls how our bodies function and change.
　　Now try to answer this question: what did the researchers look for when
　　they analysed blood samples from volunteers?
　　Ian Rowland
　　We analysed the blood samples for the amount of DNA damage in the blood. And
　　DNA damage, we know, is an important process in the development of cancer.
　　Jackie:  Did you get the answer? The researchers looked for damage to DNA.
　　Every day our DNA is damaged – that's part of our body's ageing process.
　　But it is possible to reduce DNA damage. In the experiment, the
　　researchers found two key things: what were the two things?
　　Ian Rowland
　　A decrease in the level of DNA damage in blood cells of those individuals and
　　furthermore, when we took those blood cells and treated them with a chemical which
　　caused DNA damage, they were more resistant.
　　Jackie:  Did you get those answers? They found firstly that DNA damage
　　decreased - went down - in people eating watercress. They also found the
　　cells were more resistant to chemicals that are known to damage DNA –
　　they could defend themselves better against bad chemicals. Listen again.
　　Ian Rowland
　　A decrease in the level of DNA damage in blood cells of those individuals and
　　furthermore, when we took those blood cells and treated them with a chemical that
　　caused DNA damage, they were more resistant.
　　Jackie:  So all this suggests that watercress is good at protecting our bodies and
　　may help us fight against things like cancer. But that's not the only
　　reason to eat watercress. Tom is a British chef. He is glad watercress has
　　become part of what he calls the 'super food clique'  – a clique is a kind
　　of special club or group that is not always very easy to get in to. As Tom
　　points out, there are other things that, at least for people in Britain, make
　　watercress a good choice. What are they? Try to list at least three.
　　Tom
　　I'm delighted with this piece of research. It's really nice to see a food sort of enter the
　　super food clique that's grown in Britain, largely, and all year round it's available… so
　　it's not like air freighted blueberries, it does taste good, and it's very versatile.
　　Jackie:  Did you catch any of those reasons? Tom says watercress is always
　　available - it's grown all year round, it tastes good and it's versatile,
　　which means it can be used in lots of different ways. He points out that
　　watercress in Britain isn't air freighted, which means it's not flown in
　　from other countries on a plane because it's grown in Britain.