Red onion helps prevent heart, cancer diseases

HONG KONG: Researchers at the Chinese University in Hong Kong found that red onion helps remove bad cholesterol from the body which is responsible for heart attacks and strokes.

It also retains the body's good cholesterol that in turn helps protect against heart disease, they said.

Zhen Yu Chen, who led the research, said: "Despite extensive research on onions, little is known of how their consumption interacts with human genes and proteins involved in cholesterol metabolism within the body."

"Our study was therefore undertaken to characterise the interaction of onions with enzymes in an attempt to explore the underlying cholesterol-lowering mechanism," Zhen was quoted as saying by the Daily Mail .

"This study is the first of its kind to investigate the interaction of red onions with biological functions."

For their study, the scientists fed crushed-up red onions to hamsters who had all been put on a high-cholesterol diet.

They found that after eight weeks, levels of bad cholesterol, or low density lipoprotein (LDL), had dropped by an average of 20 per cent.

Onions have long been known to have many health benefits including preventing cancer, heart disease and common coughs and colds. It has been found that some parts of the world where onion consumption is high have even been shown to have much lower cancer rates.