Food Can Have Powerful Effect on Health

From fast food and soft drinks to green tea and black coffee, new research points to the powerful role foods and beverages play in our well-being.


"These studies are a first step in a long journey toward understanding the relationship between nutrition and our health," says Lee Kaplan, MD, PhD, director of the Obesity Research Center and director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Weight Center in Boston.


Understanding this relationship will allow scientists to develop appropriate preventive and therapeutic approaches for a variety of diseases, including cancer, [and] obesity, says Kaplan, who moderated a news conference to discuss the findings.


The studies were presented at an annual meeting of digestive disease experts. Among the research:


Java Slashes Risk of Liver Disease


A jolt of java may cut the risk of liver disease among high-risk people, report researchers from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases in Bethesda, Md.


In a study of nearly 6,000 adults who were at high risk for liver damage due to either excessive drinking, having hepatitis B or hepatitis C, obesity, or other problems that may affect the liver, the greater the consumption of caffeinated beverages, the lower the chance of having elevated liver blood tests that signal liver damage, says James E. Everhart, MD, MPH, chief medical officer of the Epidemiology and Clinical Trials Division of Digestive Diseases and Nutrition.


For example, people who drank more than two cups of coffee a day were about half as likely to have elevated liver enzyme blood tests compared with those who consumed less than a cup a day. And when divided into five groups according to the total amount of caffeine consumed, people in the highest group had about one-third the risk of liver damage than those in the lowest group.


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