It’s true: Veggies fight cancer

 

When mothers told their children, back in the day, to eat their vegetables to be healthy, there was more truth to it than they realized at the time.

Scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara and at Johns Hopkins University are delving into the complexities of why cruciferous vegetables — kale, broccoli, bok choy, Brussels sprouts, to name just a few — are good for us and eating them have some surprising and heartening conclusions.

 

These types of vegetables can fight cancer, and broccoli sprouts in particular, are even more amazing.

Olga Azarenko, a graduate student at UCSB, is a co-author of newly published research on the subject in the journal Carcinogenesis.

“Breast cancer, the second leading cause of cancer deaths in women, can be protected against by eating cruciferous vegetables such as cabbage and near relatives of cabbage such as broccoli and cauliflower,” Azarenko writes.

 

It turns out the vegetables contain compounds called isothiocyanates, which researchers say are responsible for the cancer-preventative and anti-carcinogenic benefits of the vegetables.

Broccoli and broccoli sprouts have the highest amount of the compounds.

Leslie Wilson, professor of biochemistry and pharmacology at UCSB, along with Mary Ann Jordan, adjunct professor in the department of molecular, cellular and developmental biology, announced the publication of the research.

Wilson added some more information about the tiny broccoli sprouts.

“Broccoli sprouts have the highest level of sulforaphane,” he said, explaining that sulforaphane is the agent that fights breast cancer in women.

 

“Broccoli sprouts have 20 to 50 times as much as broccoli florets.”

 Sulforaphane is an anti-cancer, anti-diabetic, and anti-microbial compound that can be obtained by eating cruciferous vegetables such as Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, bok choy, kale, collards, broccoli sprouts, Chinese broccoli, rabe, kohlrabi, mustard, turnip, radish, rocket, and watercress.

The enzyme myrosinase transforms glucoraphanin (a glucosinolate) into sulforaphane upon damage to the plant (such as from chewing).

The young sprouts of broccoli and cauliflower are particularly rich in glucoraphanin.

Wilson said a professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Paul Talalay, has produced evidence in his research that three-day-old broccoli sprouts appear to be the elite fighting troops of the cruciferous veggie army, and “may offer a simple, dietary means of chemically reducing cancer risk.”

 

Talalay and his Johns Hopkins team reported feeding extracts of the sprouts to 20 female rats for five days.

The research team exposed them and a control group of rats that had not received the sprouts to a carcinogen.

“The rats that received the extracts developed fewer tumors, and those that did get tumors had smaller growths that took longer to develop,” the researchers wrote.

Johns Hopkins now has patents on forms of broccoli sprouts developed by their scientists under the trade name BroccoSprouts.

UCSB’s Wilson said that it’s difficult to quantify exactly what ingredients in which cruciferous veggies have the most beneficial effects, other than the obvious ones of broccoli sprouts.

“That’s difficult to get at,” he said. “These vegetables have various kinds of agents depending on where they’re grown.”

 

But, he added, the evidence shows that broccoli sprouts are the most heavily loaded with the cancer-fighting sulforaphane.

The substance is released from the sprouts simply by the act of chewing, he said.

“It will stop the division of cells (the actual growth of cancer) by as much as the most powerful anti-cancer drugs,” he said.

And broccoli sprouts and the other cruciferous vegetables have another powerful advantage, he said.

 

“They are just as potent but don’t have the toxicity of drugs.”

In the UCSB research paper, Azarenko emphasized the importance of the vegetables in fighting cancer.

“These vegetables contain compounds called isothiocyanates, which we believe to be responsible for the cancer-preventive and anti-carcinogenic activities in these vegetables. Broccoli and broccoli sprouts have the highest amount of the isothiocyanates.

“Our paper focuses on the anti-cancer activity of one of these compounds, called sulforaphane, or SFN,” Wilson said.

“It has already been shown to reduce the incidence and rate of chemically induced mammary tumors in animals.

 

It inhibits the growth of cultured human breast cancer cells, leading to cell death.

“SFN may be an effective cancer preventive agent because it inhibits the proliferation and kills precancerous cells. It is also possible that it could be used as an addition to Taxol and other similar drugs to increase effective killing of tumor cells without increased toxicity.”

 

 

 

Reach Margo Kline at mkline@syvjournal.com.