Entry for January 28, 2007

Eat your veggies!!!

Veggie Combo Can Stave Off Prostate Cancer
Thursday January 25, 2007

It’s a diagnosis most men fear and about one in seven Canadian males will have to face at one point: prostate cancer. Diet can have a big impact on your health and a recent American study suggests that a combination of vegetables can help prevent the disease.

Broccoli and tomatoes have been proven to contain cancer-fighting agents separately, but scientists at the University of Illinois have found that when you eat them together they work even better at staving off the illness.

U of I doctoral candidate Kirstie Canene-Adams, the study’s lead author, and two food science and human nutrition professors teamed up and fed a powdered mixture of tomato and broccoli to rats with prostate cancer.

Some of the rodents received only the tomato or broccoli alone, some got lycopene, the cancer fighting agent in tomatoes, and others were given a drug commonly prescribed to men with enlarged prostates. A group of rats was also castrated.

After 22 weeks researchers weighed the animals’ tumours and found that the broccoli-tomato powder did the best job in curtailing tumour growth, after castration, which halts the production of the hormones that spur cancer growth.

While tomatoes and broccoli have been shown to slow the growth of cancer cells, doctors recommend that men try and eat a well-balanced diet, full of fruits and veggies of all varieties to help stave off disease.

“We’ve known for a long time that diet was a major factor in whether patients develop prostate cancer,” said Dr. Laurence Klotz, a prostate cancer specialist at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. “The diet that’s healthy for your prostate is healthy for your heart.”

If you’re thinking about taking a supplement instead of the real thing you may want to think again. Researchers found that taking a substitute didn’t work as well as eating the veggies.