Traditional diets are those which retain historical eating patterns and as such the rely heavily on local plant based foods that are largely unrefined and unprocessed. Consumption of a traditional diet is associated with a reduced risk of disease, and this likely related to the presence of high amounts of micronutrients as well as other plant based nutrients such as fibre and phytochemicals. In addition traditional diets, because of their unprocessed and unrefined natures, are free from the metabolic poisons found in the typical Western diet. The most well known and well researched traditional diet is probably the Mediterranean diet, but other traditional diets have been investigated. One diet that has more recently been investigated in the Norwegian or Nordic traditional diet, and results from studies show that it may possess similar health benefits to the Mediterranean diet. These benefits include a reversal of hepatic centered metabolic dysfunction and a reduction in levels of systemic inflammation.
The benefits of a traditional Norwegian diet are likely a result of its high plant content. The traditional Norwegian diet is composed of fish, meat and potatoes, with smaller quantities of fruits and vegetables than some other traditional diets. This relates to the low amount of agricultural land suitable for crops in Norway and also the short growing period. The norwegian diet also contains whole grains and dairy products. However, the short growing period is not conducive to effective wheat cultivation, and therefore bread in the traditional Norwegian diet is made instead from mainly barley, rye or millet. Although the norwegian diet does not contain as high concentrations of fruit as some other traditional diets, the grains that are a staple of the diet provide antioxidants to the diet because they are unrefined and only partially processed. Thus the grains retain their whole grain status. Alkylresorcinols are antioxidant phytochemicals in grains and evidence suggests that plasma levels increase when whole grains are consumed.
As well as being important antioxidants in the human diet, alkylresorcinols may also be effective markers of whole grain intake (here). A recent study in the Journal of Nutrition1 investigated the changes to the blood levels of alkylresorcinols following consumption of a traditional Norwegian diet in subjects with metabolic syndrome. Subjects who were fed a traditional Norwegian diet showed significantly higher concentrations of alkylresorcinols in their blood compared to the control group following six months of consumption. The increase in alkylresorcinols in the treatment group was around 45 %. In contrast the levels of β-carotene did not increase following consumption of the traditional Norwegian diet when compared to the control diet. These results support the contention that grains contribute significantly to the antioxidant intake in the traditional Norwegian diet, and that plant foods containing carotenoids are not as important nutritionally. The antioxidant role of whole grains in the human diet has until recently be largely ignored.
Dr Robert Barrington’s Nutritional Recommendation: Grains are an important source of antioxidants. In fact some whole grains possess higher levels of certain antioxidants usually associated with berries. For example, some varieties of sorghum contain higher concentrations of anthocyanins that blueberries. The contribution to the total antioxidant capacity of a diet from whole grains has been largely overlooked in the nutritional literature until recently. While whole grains are important sources of antioxidants, refined grains on the other hand are not. Stripped of their bran and germ layers during refining, these grains provide little nutrition apart from the carbohydrate calories they possess. The use of refined grains in the Western diet is now thought to be a major contributory factor in Western diseases such as cancer, obesity and cardiovascular disease.
RdB
