Dark soy sauce is 150 times more powerful as antioxidant than Vitamins C and E
By Sharon See, Channel NewsAsia
SINGAPORE: Scientists at the National University of Singapore's Department of Biochemistry are suggesting that eating dark soy sauce may be healthy.
And contains beneficial antioxidant effects that can beat taking vitamins or drinking red wine.
24 people were asked to eat rice.
Some ate rice mixed with 6 teaspoons of dark soy sauce and others ate rice mixed with food colouring.
Those who ate the soy sauce had less free radical damage.
"The decrease in free radical damage was about 20 percent. And the change in the improvement in blood flow was about 10 or 15 percent. And these effects happened for a few hours after consumption," said Barry Halliwell, Head of the Department of Biochemistry at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, NUS.
Free radicals are believed to cause heart disease and some cancers, and antioxidants are said to be able to negate the damage from these free radicals.
Professor Halliwell also noted that the salt content in the sauce had no immediate effect on blood pressure levels.
And while lab tests show that dark soy sauce has 10 times more antioxidant capacities than red wine and is 150 times more powerful than Vitamins C and E.
However, the advice is don't rush to drink up loads of dark soy sauce just yet.
"With any nutrient, with any food, sometimes some is good, and more may be good - it may be very good, or it may be bad. So if you start taking huge amounts of dark soy sauce, it does contain things like salt and so on. So we can say from our study, that amount seemed to be good - it didn't raise blood pressure, it decreased free radical activity, and what we do need to do now is study larger amounts. So I would be very cautious about recommending more. I recommend carrying on eating it up to this level," said Professor Halliwell.
The research team now plans to test the effects of taking the sauce in larger amounts repeatedly. - CNA /dt
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