The New Super Food

　　Jackie:  Hello welcome to Entertainment! I'm Jackie Dalton. If you're someone

　　who is quite careful about what you eat and likes to be healthy, then you

　　might want to find out about what's being hailed 1 as the latest super food.

　　A 'super food' is a term which we're hearing more and more these days to

　　describe food that's very good for you. So far, the 'super foods' category

　　has included blueberries, nuts, tomatoes and garlic. But new research has

　　found that yet another type of food deserves 2 to be added to the list. And

　　that's watercress. Watercress is a small leafy green plant that grows in

　　water and tastes quite strong. It's often used in salads.

　　Ian Rowland

　　Watercress has been known for a long time to have beneficial properties.

　　Jackie:  Ian Rowland is a Professor of Human Nutrition and has just done a study

　　that shows watercress is very good for us. As he just said, it has

　　'beneficial properties' - a term we often hear to describe things which are

　　good for our health - 'beneficial properties'. Watercress has been used for

　　medicinal purposes for many years… that's another expression: if

　　something is used 'for medicinal purposes' it's used to treat or to prevent

　　illness. So, since when is watercress known to have been used for

　　medicinal purposes? Listen to find out.

　　Ian Rowland

　　Watercress has been known for a long time to have beneficial properties. It's been

　　known since the times of the Greeks, the Ancient Greeks that it has been used for

　　medicinal purposes

　　Jackie:  Did you get that answer? Watercress has been used for medicinal

　　purposes since the times of the Ancient Greeks – a very long time indeed!

　　Professor Rowland and his team carried out an experiment on volunteers

　　to see what effect eating watercress would have on them. Two questions

　　for you to answer this time: how many volunteers took part in the

　　experiment and how much watercress did they eat each day?

　　Ian Rowland

　　We recruited 3 60 volunteers, who ate a bag of watercress – one bag a day. And these

　　were a nice cross-section of people, they were 19 to 55 years old, they ate it for 8 weeks.

　　Jackie:  Did you get those answers? They recruited sixty volunteers for the

　　experiment and they each had to eat a bag a day. Ian said they had a

　　cross-section of the population, which means it was a group of peopl

　　that was typical of the population as whole, with a range of ages,

　　lifestyles, races and so on.

　　BBC Learning 4 English

　　Before we hear from Ian again, a few bits of language that might be

　　useful to you:

　　To analyse something – means to examine it very closely 5

　　A sample – a sample is a small part or amount of something that's

　　examined in order to find out something about the whole, doctors

　　sometimes look at blood samples to find out what is wrong with patients.

　　DNA 6 – is a substance that carries information in the cells of the body and

　　controls how our bodies function and change.

　　Now try to answer this question: what did the researchers look for when

　　they analysed blood samples from volunteers?

　　Ian Rowland

　　We analysed the blood samples for the amount of DNA damage in the blood. And

　　DNA damage, we know, is an important process in the development of cancer.

　　Jackie:  Did you get the answer? The researchers looked for damage to DNA.

　　Every day our DNA is damaged – that's part of our body's ageing process.

　　But it is possible to reduce DNA damage. In the experiment, the

　　researchers found two key things: what were the two things?

　　Ian Rowland

　　A decrease in the level of DNA damage in blood cells of those individuals and

　　furthermore 7, when we took those blood cells and treated them with a chemical which

　　caused DNA damage, they were more resistant 8.

　　Jackie:  Did you get those answers? They found firstly that DNA damage

　　decreased - went down - in people eating watercress. They also found the

　　cells were more resistant to chemicals that are known to damage DNA –

　　they could defend themselves better against bad chemicals. Listen again.

　　Ian Rowland

　　A decrease in the level of DNA damage in blood cells of those individuals and

　　furthermore, when we took those blood cells and treated them with a chemical that

　　caused DNA damage, they were more resistant.

　　Jackie:  So all this suggests that watercress is good at protecting our bodies and

　　may help us fight against things like cancer. But that's not the only

　　reason to eat watercress. Tom is a British chef. He is glad watercress has

　　become part of what he calls the 'super food clique 9'  – a clique is a kind

　　of special club or group that is not always very easy to get in to. As Tom

　　points out, there are other things that, at least for people in Britain, make

　　watercress a good choice. What are they? Try to list at least three.

　　Tom

　　I'm delighted with this piece of research. It's really nice to see a food sort of enter the

　　super food clique that's grown in Britain, largely 10, and all year round it's available… so

　　it's not like air freighted 11 blueberries, it does taste good, and it's very versatile 12.

　　Jackie:  Did you catch any of those reasons? Tom says watercress is always

　　available - it's grown all year round, it tastes good and it's versatile,

　　which means it can be used in lots of different ways. He points out that

　　watercress in Britain isn't air freighted, which means it's not flown in

　　from other countries on a plane because it's grown in Britain.

　　That's all for this week and if you're not already a watercress eater

　　perhaps, if you can get it where you are, it's worth trying it out.