Research on fruit's benefits honoured

Eat your fruit and veggies. They taste nice but they might also help save your life, according to important new research carried out at University College Cork which identifies beneficial "phytochemicals".

Fresh fruit and vegetables contain a range of natural chemicals that can help reduce the risk of cancer and heart disease, according to research led by Dr Nora O'Brien of UCC. Last night in Dublin she received the Royal Irish Academy Award in Nutritional Sciences 2000, an annual presentation to mark "exceptional research in the nutritional sciences undertaken by those under the age of 45".

Dr O'Brien is a senior lecturer in the department of food science, food technology and nutrition and leads a group that has been researching phytochemicals - beneficial substances occurring in plants.

One hundred years ago the greatest cause of death in Western societies was infection but now it is "over-nutrition", she said. "There is very strong evidence that dietary practices, in particular over-nutrition, are a major causative factor in the dramatic increase in mortality from heart disease and related disorders and cancers." There was also a growing body of research that showed eating fruit and vegetables could protect against a number of these dietary diseases.

This had sparked intensive research into identifying key phytochemicals and learning how they helped to reduce disease. Her work focused in particular on how certain phytochemicals protected against genetic and cell damage. She devised a range of experiments to show how certain flavonoids could protect against free radical damage to DNA.