The Allium Family

Are you familiar with the allium family of vegetables? They include onions, garlic, leeks, chives, shallots, and scallions. These vegetables, like green cruciferous vegetables, have powerful anti-cancer benefits. These compounds are not activated until you chop, crush, or chew them and break down their cell wall. You can smell a whole onion all day without it making you cry. Cut it open and start chopping and you have activated those powerful compounds.

These compounds are called organosulfur compounds and they are anti-angiogenic, which means that they can prevent tumors from obtaining a blood supply to fuel their growth. In studies of breast cancer cells, garlic and onion phytochemicals have caused cell death or halted cell division, preventing the cancer cells from multiflying.
  
Shallots are one of the best in the allium family of vegetables. Red and yellow onions are also pretty high in anti-oxidants but white onions are lower in anti-oxidant compounds. Red onions are particularly rich in anthocyanins which is also abundant in berries. Quercetin is an anti-oxidant the keeps damaged cells from advancing to cancer, and also have anti-inflammatory effects that may contribute to cancer prevention. Onions are also anti-viral and anti-bacterial. Eat them every day!

Reported by Joel Fuhrman, MD - www.DrFuhrman.com
The other night for dinner I fixed my Deep Dish Tortilla Pie, which I will be demonstrating at my Bridge Recovery Center (http://www.thebridgerecoverycenter.com/) class tonight, and was reminded of how good it is and that I need to fix it more often! The recipe is out of my cook book Whole Food Goodness and you can also find it on my recipe page here.
Try it this week end and let me know what you think!