The importance of a healthy diet is generally accepted, but what about the medicinal value of food? Research at a New Zealand University is yielding interesting results, writes Gráinne Faller
From Atkins to South Beach, haute cuisine to McDonalds, obesity to Posh Spice, we are a society obsessed with food. Whether we abide by it or not, we all know the importance of a balanced diet for our overall well-being. It's all common sense really, as a good diet boosts the immune system, thereby preventing illness in the first place.
But how useful is food as an actual medicine? Certainly, in days of yore, people didn't go to the doctor for every ailment. They had their own remedies. Hippocrates, of the oath, famously said, "Let food be thy medicine and medicine thy food". Up until recently, people did.
With the discovery of penicillin and the dawn of a new era in medicine, the idea of food as an actual cure for ailments was largely consigned to the old-wives school of thought.
But now, between superbugs and antibiotic-resistant infections, the limitations and sometimes dangers of modern medicine are beginning to manifest themselves. What do we do if a bug cannot be killed by the best drugs we have?
To grapple with this question, some scientists are going back to basics. They are taking another look at foods that have been used as medicine over the years and some of their discoveries are really quite startling.
At the moment, scientists in the University of Waikato in New Zealand are conducting research on that humblest of substances: honey.
Many people would have taken honey for a sore throat at some point. Its medicinal qualities have been widely documented through history from ancient Egypt to World War II. Even Aristotle wrote about how different types of honey were good for infections.
It is that infection-fighting quality that Dr Peter Molan is interested in. He is currently leading the research on honey in the University of Waikato. He says: "Honey is a powerful antibacterial agent. When applied to a wound, it rapidly cleans off pus and dead tissue by stimulating the activities of leukocytes that are involved in fighting infection. It is also a potent anti-inflammatory and it stimulates the growth of new tissue, reducing both scarring, and the need for skin grafts."
Depending on the flower from which it comes, honey contains varying levels of hydrogen peroxide which is strong enough to kill bacteria in wounds but is diluted enough not to harm the skin.
Dr Molan's research concerns a specific type of honey that has become widely known because of its particularly effective antibacterial qualities. Honey from the manuka flower in New Zealand is now going through the process of clinical trials.
"Our research on manuka honey is at a stage where work is near completed on demonstrating its effectiveness against the various species of micro-organisms, including the superbugs, which are usually responsible for wound infections," he says.
In fact, the Central Public Health Laboratory in London and the Centre for Biomedical Sciences in the University of Wales, which have been working in partnership with the researchers in New Zealand, have shown that manuka honey appears to have at least ten times the potency needed to completely stop the growth of the different types of superbug.
So far, they haven't found a single superbug that is resistant to the honey. The research is ongoing, but it looks promising.
So can you, in theory, take out a jar of honey from your cupboard and apply it to a nasty cut?
Dr Molan says: "The honey that's sold for medicinal purposes is no different from the honey that has traditionally been a food, other than that some companies select batches with a high level of antibacterial activity, and that all process it under the high standards of cleanliness and purity required for all medicinal products.
"Although honey that hasn't been sterilised, has been used on wounds for thousands of years, there are risks involved as it may contain foreign particles that may become embedded in a wound. If you don't keep sufficient honey on the wound, those particles may give rise to infection."
The success of the trials has delighted the researchers, but the practical use of honey on wounds in hospitals proved to be a bit complicated. Funnily enough, the problems had nothing to do with dosage or anything like that. The main challenge was trying to keep the runny stuff on people's wounds as it would just flow off.
The researchers set about developing solutions to this problem and came up with a honey-impregnated dressing pad. Now, they have succeeded in turning honey into a rubbery gel, which is much easier to handle and has been granted a European patent.
The results are extremely positive. Perhaps the biggest challenge now is to persuade the hospitals that something so simple could be used in the front line in the fight against superbugs. Sometimes the simplest answers are the hardest to accept.