Western diet characteristics

The characteristic deep-red color of ripe tomato fruit and related products is mainly due to lycopene. This color serves as an important indicator of their quality. Tomatoes and tomato foods are an important source of carotenoids for humans and are a major source of lycopene in the Western diet. Other important sources of dietary lycopene include watermelon, guava, rose hip, papaya and pink grapefruit (Gross, 1987,1991 Beerh and Siddappa, 1959 Mangels et al., 1993) (Table 4.3). 

Table 1 Characteristics of Hunter—Gatherer and Western Diet and Lifestyles ...

Characteristic Hunter-Gatherer Diet and Lifestyle Western Diet and Lifestyle... 

There is an increasing interest in the lipid characteristics of nut oils as they seem to be an interesting source of bioactive constituents and functional ingredients [170,174,187]. Among tree nuts, hazelnut has many beneficial health attributes and is among three most popular and commonly consumed tree nuts in Europe [188] and other Western populations [179]. The benefits of hazelnut inclusion into the human diet is partly related to its fat components (around 60%), most of which are highly rich in MUEA (primarily oleic acid), tocols (a-tocopherol), phytosterols (p-sitosterol), polyphenols, and squalene [10,12,99,104,117,160,170,189]. 

Epidemiological evidence in causative relationships between fiber-depleted diets and certain characteristically Western diseases has stimulated research Interest in the physiological and physico-chemical properties of various dietary fibers in the past decade (1). Dietary fibers are composed of cellulose, lignin, and noncellulosic polysaccharides, all of which are the... 

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