Gayl Canfield, PhD, RD, LD
Nutritionist & Educator at the Pritikin Longevity Center & Spa
Acclaimed nutrition professor, researcher, and lover of fine food, Dr.Canfield offers expert advice on a diversity of hot health topics, including nutrition and cancer prevention, losing weight and keeping it off, women’s health, healthy eating in restaurants, label reading, and healthy cooking.
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Sure, everyone knows that citrus fruits like oranges and lemon are packed with vitamin C. Now, scientists are uncovering another big bonus in citrus: healthful natural compounds called limonoids.
Led by chemist Dr. Gary D. Manners at the Agricultural Research Service, the USDA’s chief scientific research agency, investigators have found in laboratory tests with both animals and human cells that citrus limonoids help fight cancers of the mouth, skin, lung, breast, stomach, and colon. *
In their Agricultural Research Laboratories in Albany, California, Dr. Manners and colleagues also learned that limonin, a derivative of limonoid, may lower cholesterol. When exposed to limonin in petri dishes, human liver cells produced less apo B, a compound associated with higher cholesterol levels. Currently, the USDA team is studying the cholesterol-lowering effects of limonins on healthy adult volunteers.
The good news: You don’t have to be in Dr. Manners’ lab to reap the many health benefits of citrus foods. All the fabulous flavors and nutritional powers of oranges, grapefruits, tangerines, lemons, and other citrus foods are at your grocery market – yours to enjoy every day!
* Agricultural Research, 2005; 53(2): 16.
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