Eating Lots Of Broccoli May Help Protect Men From Prostate Cancer, Study Says

Eating lots of cruciferous vegetables, including broccoli , cauliflower, or even coleslaw, may help protect men from prostate cancer, but consuming tomato products probably will not, researchers said.

Scientists from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle found that just three daily servings of vegetables cut a man’s risk of prostate cancer nearly in half.

They believe vegetables protect against cancer risk because they contain a wide variety of phytochemicals, which when consumed, the phytochemicals trigger the activity of enzymes that can detoxify cancer-promoting compounds in the body.

The results called into question earlier research extolling the prostate cancer-fighting benefits of lycopene. “Every men’s magazine in the country says eat more spaghetti sauce to cut your prostate cancer risk, but we found no relation at all,” said Dr. Alan kristal, a co-investigator of the study.

Scientists in this study looked at the associations of total fruit and vegetable consumption in 1,230 Seattle-area men between the ages of 40 and 64. Half of the men who participated had been diagnosed with prostate cancer while the other half were randomly selected.

The findings, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, showed that men who ate three or more servings of vegetables a day had a 48 percent lower risk of prostate cancer, compared with men who ate fewer than one serving a day.