By Jane Erikson
The Arizona Daily Star

If you have high cholesterol, here's a new suggestion: Eat more prickly pear! Sure you say, but why? Because the pectin contained in prickly pear pads is known to lower low-density lipoprotein. Also known as LDL, the so-called "bad" cholesterol that puts people at risk for heart disease. So far, that finding is confined to guinea pigs. Maris Luz Fernandes, a nutrition and food scientist at the University of Arizona, expects prickly pear pectin will eventually prove as beneficial to humans.

With a $70,000.00 grant from the American Heart Association's Arizona chapter, Fernandez will spend the next two years in more basic research. Previous studies have shown that different types of pectin, (a high-fiber, gelatinous substance contained in many fruits) appear to lower cholesterol levels in humans. Apples and other fruits were used in those studies.

Pectin may lower cholesterol levels by boosting the number of LDL receptors in the liver. Those receptors attach to LDL particles, removing them from the bloodstream and flushing them out of the body, along with the other toxic wastes the liver filters out. The pectin does not appear to affect the level of high-density lipoprotein, or HDL, the so-called "good" cholesterol. Which works to keep blood cholesterol levels in check.

Diabetics not able to control their diabetes with diet alone, were studied by Augusto Trejo, at the National Polytechnic Institute in Michoacan, Mexico. The diabetics required one or more insulin injections a day. Trejo found that by giving them 60 milligrams (less than 1/8 of a teaspoon), a day of prickly pear pectin, the diabetics were able to significantly lower their insulin requirement. Other types of pectin brought about the same result, but in much higher amounts - 15 to 20 grams a day.

Prickly pear cactus grows wild throughout the United States and Mexico. Eating prickly pear is hardly a novel idea. Nopalitos, made from young prickly pear buds, have been a Mexican and Southwestern delicacy for generations.