DIET COLUMN

Fashion genius and yoga devotee, Donna Karan, has just donated $850,000 to Beth Israel Medical Center in New York to test how yoga can help individuals undergoing chemotherapy and radiation treatments.

In 2001, Karan lost her own husband and business partner to lung cancer. From his death, she created the Urban Zen Foundation, a patient-advocacy organization that inspires change and raises awareness of integrative healing.

Yoga has long been close to Karan’s heart, even as she clocked 100-hour work-weeks creating her own signature DKNY line of clothing. She has been a dedicated practitioner of Ashtanga yoga for many years. As she sat bedside next to her ailing husband, she noticed as comprehensive as his care was, he was not treated or looked at holistically. Instead, he became an amalgam of laboratory tests, medications and advanced equipment. Not to say his care was anything less than excellent, but this absence of treating the whole person, stayed with her and prompted the seeds for this very generous gift to one of New York’s premiere hospitals.

A team of UK genetic scientists engineered tomatoes with a purple pigment taken from snapdragons. This pigment contains the antioxidant known as anthocyanin, which is the same antioxidant found in blueberries and blackberries. The scientists’ rationale was the thought that inserting this pigment into the plant would boost the tomato’s level of antioxidants, however they were not expecting the surprise of the tomatoes changing colors!