Learn English While Exploring Superfoods Ep 792
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Hi there, and welcome to this podcast from Adept English. Today, let's get fully into the New Year feel. It'll be 2025 by the time you're listening to this. So, as ever, in comes the New Year. Happy New Year. Hope yours was a good one.

And suddenly we're all encouraged to be on a drive for our health. So today I thought I would start the ball rolling, begin that process by doing a health and nutrition related topic.

That word nutrition, N-U-T-R-I-T-I-O-N, is the science of what you eat and its effect on our health and our bodies. This means it's an interesting topic today, but also lots of great English vocabulary for you to listen to and learn.

Hello, I'm Hilary and you're listening to Adept English. We will help you to speak English fluently. All you have to do is listen. So start listening now and find out how it works.

Before that, just a reminder about our Adept English courses. One course in particular is useful to you in two possible ways. If you find the podcast difficult or it takes you a while to work through them, or if you understand them really well, but you're one of the people stuck at not being able to speak English, then take note.

Our Most Common 500 Words course is our most popular course for a reason. It will help raise your level of understanding, but also move you towards speaking English. This course will ensure that you have all the basic English vocabulary, the most common words, so that you'll know and understand

understand them automatically. It makes sense to do that. That's adept learning and it will give your skill level in English a major lift. So check out our Most Common 500 Words course on our website at adeptenglish.com. It's available to buy today. So today's podcast is based on an article

a fascinating article entitled Superfoods that made headlines in 2024 by Bronwyn Thomas in New Atlas. And it really is interesting. I'll run through the points that the article makes, but also express my hesitation about some of the research. That's my opinion creeping in. But some really useful and interesting health information here. What I'm doing is giving you access to

to an interesting article, which you probably won't be able to find unless it's in English. And I'm giving you a tutorial, a lesson, if you like, in how to understand this article. It's great English practice, as well as giving you access to something which you'll probably only find in written English. The article starts by quoting research, which suggests that eating cheese is linked to better mental health in older people. I'm

so sceptical of this type of research. That's sceptical, S-C-E-P-T-I-C-A-L. And if I'm sceptical, it means I find it hard to believe this research. The article says it was adjusted for socioeconomic factors. That means that they adjusted the results to allow for the fact that some people have more money than others. And I believe them. I'm sure they've taken care about that. But...

There are probably hundreds of factors, hundreds of things that affect your mental health in later life. And I can't believe for a minute that all of these other factors have been eliminated in the study to show a clear link between better mental health and eating cheese. Surely you can't say that better mental health in...

later life can be solely down to eating cheese. And it's the same with the information further on in this article about eating nuts. The headline here is nuts help protect the brain from dementia. Vocabulary here, nuts, N-U-T-S. They come from trees and examples are walnuts,

hazelnuts, cashews and pistachios. And dementia, D-E-M-E-N-T-I-A, that's the condition where you lose brain function in later life. None of us want dementia. Here, what the research says may be true. But what if people who eat lots of nuts are also taking other measures for their health? For example, I

eat a handful of walnuts every day. If I succeed in not getting dementia, who could say that that's because of my not eating? It could equally well happen because of the other measures I take for my health, like not eating very much sugar.

exercising or limiting my alcohol intake. The trouble is people who are health conscious don't tend to just do one thing for their health. They tend to do lots of things for their health. So I don't think that research can remove the effect of all those other factors. And

and get a clear signal that better mental health in later life is solely down to eating nuts. It can't be. Or if it is, it's difficult to prove. The famous phrase here is correlation is not causation. Look that one up if you need to. And it's the

it's the same with the research in the article that's quoted and says eating fruit is linked to less depression in later life. I've already critiqued this research in episode 13 of our subscription service. How can you possibly

you possibly say it's just down to fruit, not a broadly healthier lifestyle in general? I don't think you can. And another one. There's a section in this article headed Dark Chocolates Link to Diabetes in a good way. I think that there's little doubt that dark chocolate is much better for you than milk chocolate, which is sugar heavy or even worse, white chocolate.

And there are, in fact, quite a few health benefits from dark chocolate. But again, I think the research, which says five servings of dark chocolate per week are linked to a 21% reduction in diabetes, is potentially flawed. Dark chocolate is what we call an acquired taste. It

It's not the chocolate that your children ask for, is it? Even as adults, if we decide to eat dark chocolate for health reasons, we have to get used to it before we like it. But we do. Once you're used to dark chocolate, milk chocolate tastes too sweet. But again, people who are purposefully switching to dark chocolate are probably

making other changes that benefit their health. Don't get me wrong, I'd absolutely love it if you could reduce your risk of diabetes by 21% just by eating dark chocolate. And I do eat dark chocolate. It's just, again, I think it's hard to say that a correlation, C-O-R-R-E,

R-E-L-A-T-I-O-N, a link in the data, in other words, means that dark chocolate is the sole reason for less diabetes amongst people who eat it. I think the useful and interesting parts of this article are the ones where it highlights two new food effects.

ones I hadn't heard of, and the sections where it cautions against too heavy use of supplements. I'll take those in turn and explain the vocabulary. Firstly, the new research that I hadn't heard. The article quotes...

Honey helps probiotics reach the gut. Honey, H-O-N-E-Y, is sweet and comes from bees. The word probiotic, P-R-O-B-I-O-T-I-C, if you've not heard it, it means basically substances you take by mouth...

which help you have so-called good bacteria in your body. And your gut, G-U-T, is a word for your digestive system. Again, I've done a whole subscription episode, episode 35, for our subscription service. So if you're signed up for that, you'll be getting that one soon. I did it on the health benefits of good bacteria. The challenge with

taking good bacteria in foods or in tablet form, otherwise known as food supplements, is trying to ensure that the good bacteria actually reach the place in your body where they do their good work. So to read that there's evidence that taking them with honey, especially yogurt and honey, means more of the good bacteria arrive in your gut where you can use it, that's really interesting. Plus the

fact that natural yogurt with honey is nice to eat anyway. And the second piece of research I hadn't heard, it says strawberries can aid the body in silencing allergies. Vocabulary again, an allergy, A-L-L-E-R-G-Y, is when your body reacts to substances which are harmless as though they're harmful.

So if you're allergic, that's A-L-L-E-R-G-I-C, to pollen from grass or trees in the summer, you may have what we call hay fever. That's an example of an allergy. There are lots of different allergies and they can make life difficult for people. So knowing that strawberries, a simple fruit, can lessen the effect

of allergies on people. That's brilliant. That research comes straight out of Tokyo University. I will be reading up on that. The article in New Atlas ends by sounding a warning about apparently healthy foods and taking too many food supplements, both things which can do people harm. In the section entitled Watermelon's Hidden Danger, the article talks about how the fruit watermelon is

has high potassium, P-O-T-A-S-S-I-U-M, or the chemical symbol K. That's potassium. Our bodies need potassium, but only in moderation. Apparently, the potassium in watermelons can be so high that it affects people's kidneys, K-I-D-N-E-Y. And this is all the more so as plenty older people

have disease of the kidney or reduced kidney function without even knowing it. So people have ended up in hospital because of eating too much potassium in watermelon. Probably we eat more watermelon than is good because they are huge fruits. Perhaps better to buy a portion of watermelon rather than a whole one.

And the other warning sounded by the article, turmeric and green tea lands people in hospital. Turmeric, T-U-R-M-E-R-I-C, is a spice common in Indian curries, and it has in recent years been said to have such health benefits.

that people take it as a nutritional supplement. That means turmeric in tablet form or capsule. And it's the same with green tea. I've certainly taken EGCG from green tea in tablet form in the past.

The problem often with supplements is the high dose. It's easy to take too much of it. And you can buy supplements online with huge high doses in them. The article makes the point that doing too much turmeric or green tea extract can do you harm, harm your liver.

LIVER, and that hepatotoxicity or harm to the liver has put lots of people in hospital. Virtually every supplement you take exits the body through the liver. It's worth bearing in mind. In these days where people are increasingly suspicious of big

farmer, this article makes an interesting point towards the end. It says just because the treatments aren't products of the pharmaceutical industry, it doesn't mean they're risk-free. So the upshot, the takeaway or the message, if you like, beware what and how much nutritional supplement you take. OK.

Okay, hopefully that's interesting information and you can find links in the transcript on our website to the original article in New Atlas and to the research. Hopefully there I've simplified a complex topic so that you can understand it more easily. Let me know whether I've been successful in that.

And whether you found this too difficult, as always, we love to hear from you. Enough for now. Have a lovely day. Speak to you again soon. Goodbye. Oh, and Happy New Year. Thank you so much for listening. Please help me tell others about this podcast by reviewing or rating it. And please share it on social media.

You can find more listening lessons and a free English course at adeptenglish.com.