In 1990, President George H.W. Bush famously dissed broccoli.
“I haven’t liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. I’m President of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli,” he said, a year into his term as commander-in-chief.
If only he knew who he was tangling with.
Cancer-fighting qualities?
While other veggies, like Popeye’s spinach (which Bush is reportedly a fan of), are credited with strength-endowing properties, it’s broccoli you should be eating if you want to fight cancer, according to several new studies.
Not only does a cup of broccoli provide over a full dose of your daily need of vitamins C and K, as well as high doses of vitamin A, folate and potassium, it may attack cancer at a genetic level.
The study, highlighted in Current Pharmacology Reports, found cruciferous vegetables, a group that includes broccoli along with Brussels sprouts, cabbage, kale and cauliflower, have a unique ability to regulate genes that enable cancer cells to proliferate.
According to the study performed by researchers at the University of Alabama-Birmingham (UAB), the long-insulted vegetable has high levels of cancer-fighting compounds indole-3 carbinols and sulforaphane. The latter has already shown a well-established ability to fight estrogen-dependent cancers, like breast and uterine cancers, and evidence is emerging that it has benefits against bladder cancers, prostate cancer and leukemia.
How does it impact cancer?
UAB researchers think they’ve figured out why “” it fights cancer at the genetic level, limiting the genes that help cancerous cells grow. Their work showed sulforaphane can inhibit the enzyme histone deacetylase (HDAC), known to be involved in the progression of cancer cells. Sulforaphane is now being studied for its ability to delay or impede cancer with promising results shown in melanoma, esophageal, prostate and pancreatic cancers, as well.
A second study published in the medical journal Cancer Prevention Research looked at the ability of broccoli sprouts, which are higher in sulforaphane than adult broccoli, to increase the body’s ability to detoxify airborne pollutants, particularly benzene. Benzene has been linked to several types of cancer as well as anemia.
The study, conducted in part by researchers at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, found that during a 12-week period, broccoli sprouts significantly increased the excretion of benzene and other pollutants, leaving less in the body to spur cancer growth.
Not bad for a vegetable we all pushed to the side of the plate when we were kids.
