They know well that organic food is respectful of the environment and is produced naturally, in such a way that it avoids damaging the environment and allows the health of those who consume it to be taken care of. Can you also help us? prevent aging? Let’s see it very briefly.
What saves our health
By choosing organic food, and among many other advantages, we will avoid all those additives – it is just a short list – that are in many of the elaborated and processed products found in the supermarket. With this, the human body will have to make less effort and spend energy to, if possible, eliminate them.
- Nitrates and nitrites: They are used as colorants, flavorings and to extend the shelf life of the product. They are added to meat products. They can form nitrosamines, of carcinogenic action.
- potassium bromate: used in all types of breads to help rise the dough during baking. It is listed as a carcinogen and banned in some countries.
- Propylparaben: it is an endocrine disruptor, that is, it causes very serious damage to our hormones. It is used in pancakes, muffins, dairy products and some industrial beverages.
- Hydroxyanisole butyrate: is a carcinogenic endocrine disruptor that reduces the level of testosterone and thyroxine. It is found in meats and chips, or as a flavoring.
By choosing organic food we will avoid all those additives that are in many of the elaborated and processed products
- butyl hydroxytoluene: It is another endocrine disruptor that is used in pet food and in pasta, pizza, noodles, instant rice and to create artificial flavors.
- propyl gallate: preservative in products that contain fats, which can act as an endocrine disruptor due to its estrogenic activity.
- diacetyl: Gives “flavor” to yogurts, cheeses and buttered popcorn. It is related to severe and irreversible damage to the lungs (bronchiolitis obliterans).
- flavorings: appear in more than 80,000 food products. Flavoring mixes are sometimes very complex and a single product can contain up to a hundred different agents. Flavor extracts often come from transgenics. There are “natural” flavors with synthetic chemical agents (propylene glycol, BHA).
- artificial colors: they do not add any nutritional value and may be contaminated by furans (related to some types of cancer). They affect children’s behavior (hyperactivity, inattention).
- phosphates: They are in more than 20,000 food products and have been linked to cardiovascular and kidney disorders.
- Aluminum: Aluminum accumulates in our body mainly in the bones. It is still used in the food industry as a stabilizer. It produces neurological changes with behavioral disorders, difficulties in learning or in motor response.
Telomeres, our vital “hourglass”
Now, does organic food really help to age more slowly? Of course, and to answer this question we will not resort to statistics. It is enough to cite the marvelous cellular activity of the telomeres. For a long time it was believed that human cells in culture were immortal and could divide infinitely. But in 1960, the researcher Leonard Hayflick he couldn’t keep the cells in his lab alive. He initially thought he was a poor caretaker, but no matter how well he treated his cells, the problem kept recurring. The cells divided a certain number of times, and then died. If he froze the cells after a series of divisions and brought them back to life, the cells continued to divide, but when they reached a number similar to the previous one, they died. Somehow the cells ‘remembered’ the divisions made before hibernation.
Hayflick he suspected that each cell had a kind of division counter, an internal clock that told it when to die. When in 1961 he published his finding, he was heavily criticized and even ridiculed by the scientific community. The dogma of cellular immortality was strongly ingrained and he had to wait more than ten years until his discovery was recognized. Human cells are not immortal, and only divide a certain number of times: this is what scientists now know as Hayflick’s limit.
Mixtures of flavorings are very complex and a single product can contain up to a hundred different agents.
What determines this division limit? Telomeres.
Scientists explain to us that a telomere is a region of repetitive DNA sequences at the end of a chromosome. Telomeres (from the Greek telos, “end,” and mere, “part”) protect the ends of chromosomes from becoming frayed or tangled. Every time a cell divides, the telomeres get a little bit shorter. Eventually, they become so short that the cell can no longer divide properly, and the cell dies. The difficult thing is, therefore, to protect these extremes.
As they get shorter, telomeres work like a clock for the cell (counting down how old the cell is, and limiting how many times the cell can divide without losing important parts of the chromosome’s DNA). And their activity is fascinating. For example, cancer cells—with an enormous capacity for self-division—keep their telomeres long so they can keep dividing, when in fact they shouldn’t anymore. That’s why, Along with the importance of choosing organic food, it is also important to take into account a reasonable dietary plan.
