The Prune Board Climbs on the Bandwagon
Sun, November 9, 2008 at 02:59AM It's become customary for specialty food companies to conduct research to demonstrate the medical benefits of their product. The latest example comes from the California Dried Plum Board, which represents over 800 prune growers and packers.
A strain of mice that develop atherosclerosis more rapidly than normal were used in the study, which was reported in the British Journal of Nutrition. Dried plum powder was fed to such mice over a 5-month period at a dose equivalent to a human eating 10 to 12 prunes a day. By the end of the study, there was a reduction in the area of atherosclerosis in the entire arterial system, compared with mice not fed the powder.
It seems that the fiber pectin in prunes may reduce cholesterol levels (it does in humans), which resulted in less atherosclerosis. I guess the next step is to see if prunes eaten in this quantity can reduce atherosclerosis formation in humans . . . Or researchers must find out the constituent in prunes that is so effective, purify and/or synthesize it (or a close relative), and get the FDA to approve it.
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