🌿 Folk Prescriptions

The World Health Organization (WHO) Executive Committee, at its 113th session, proposed recommendations for food choices, including limiting saturated fat intake and replacing it with unsaturated fats, increasing consumption of vegetables, fruits, legumes, and whole grains, and adopting a healthy diet for life.
Journalists consulted nutrition experts regarding WHO’s recommended food list. Nutrition technician Xie from the Department of Nutrition, Guangzhou General Hospital, Guangzhou Military Region, explained WHO’s recommendations. She believes the best foods recommended by WHO focus on enhancing immune function, antioxidant properties, preventing cardiovascular diseases, and reducing cancer risk. These foods are rich in vitamins A, E, C, selenium, indole, and other anti-cancer components. Additionally, consuming foods high in dietary fiber, various minerals, and vitamins while controlling excessive unsaturated fatty acid intake is essential.
Best Vegetables: Sweet potato tops all vegetables, followed by asparagus, cabbage, broccoli, celery, eggplant, beetroot, carrot, shepherd’s purse, enoki mushroom, snow pea, and Chinese cabbage.
Expert Explanation: Sweet potato contains abundant vitamin A precursors and high levels of vitamin C—making it the top anti-cancer vegetable.
Asparagus improves metabolism, relieves fatigue. Its non-protein nitrogenous compounds, primarily asparagine, and aspartic acid contribute to these effects. Manganese and chromium help prevent cardiovascular diseases. Molybdenum blocks the synthesis of harmful nitrites (which are carcinogenic).
Cabbage, celery, eggplant, beetroot, enoki mushrooms, and Chinese cabbage are rich in vitamin C and antioxidants, which inhibit the activity of carcinogens, increase detoxifying compounds, and suppress carcinogens like nitrosamines and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.
Best Fruits: The top 10 best fruits are papaya, strawberry, orange, tangerine, kiwi, mango, apricot, persimmon, and watermelon.
Expert Explanation: The ranking considers vitamins, minerals, fiber, and caloric content. Papaya, known as the “king of fruits,” contains carpaine, which has anti-cancer properties.
Strawberries, tangerines, oranges, kiwis (dragon fruit), mangoes, apricots, persimmons, and tomatoes are rich in vitamin C and beta-carotene, offering antioxidant effects, neutralizing free radicals, and helping prevent cancer. Free radicals don’t cause immediate sensations like car accidents, tumors, pain, or fever—they harm cells and tissues silently. Like salt dissolving invisibly in clear water, their damage accumulates until noticeable, eventually becoming bitter. Free radicals are the main cause of aging. Also, portion control is important—persimmons shouldn’t be overeaten (risk of gastric stones), and excessive oranges may cause internal heat. Eating fruit on an empty stomach isn’t ideal; consuming between meals is better.
Best Meats: Chicken, duck, goose.
Expert Explanation: Duck and goose meats, though comparable in fat to livestock meats, have chemical structures similar to olive oil—beneficial for heart patients and excellent sources of animal protein.
Best Soups: Chicken soup.
Expert Explanation: American psychiatrists found that drinking chicken soup boosts adrenaline secretion during depression, improving mental state. Additionally, special substances in mother’s chicken soup help prevent colds—especially suitable for spring and winter. Thus, preparing chicken soup now, during early spring, greatly benefits health.
Best Brain-Boosting Foods: Spinach, leeks, green onions, kale, bell peppers, peas, tomatoes, carrots, baby greens, garlic shoots, celery, walnuts, peanuts, pistachios, cashews, pine nuts, almonds, soybeans, and brown rice.
Expert Explanation: Not all foods benefit the brain—for example, fried foods, instant noodles, hamburgers, and fatty meats can alter blood vessel walls, affecting blood flow and causing cerebral ischemia. To protect the brain, consume “reducing agents” that prevent vascular changes. Foods rich in vitamin E, such as walnuts, peanuts, pistachios, pine nuts, almonds, soybeans, and brown rice, act as reducing agents, maintaining vascular elasticity.
Pork liver is rich in vitamins A and B complex, highly nutritious, affordable, and widely available. However, it’s not advisable to eat too much because it is the pig’s detox organ. Given current environmental pollution, pigs’ feed and living conditions are often contaminated, potentially contaminating their detox organs. Consuming such organs may transfer pollutants to humans.
Best Cooking Oils: Corn oil, rice bran oil, sesame oil are preferable. Mixing plant oils and animal oils in a ratio of 1:0.5 to 1:1 is even better.
Expert Explanation: Corn oil, rice bran oil, and sesame oil contain abundant unsaturated fatty acids—essential components for human tissues—and help remove cholesterol from blood vessel walls, reducing risks of hyperlipidemia, atherosclerosis, and coronary heart disease.
The recommended 1:0.5 to 1:1 ratio refers to the mixing proportion of plant and animal oils—the ratio of polyunsaturated to unsaturated fatty acids. Plant oils contain polyunsaturated fatty acids; animal oils contain unsaturated fatty acids (a combination of poly- and monounsaturated fatty acids). Excessive intake of polyunsaturated fatty acids generates free radicals, promotes platelet aggregation and thrombosis, accelerates aging, and increases cancer risk. However, from a dialectical perspective, moderate amounts of unsaturated fatty acids, especially monounsaturated ones, are necessary. Therefore, blending a certain proportion of animal oil is beneficial to human health.