Eating veggies and fruits cuts risk of certain bowel cancers

Washington: Eating vegetable such as brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli significantly cuts the risk of developing colorectal cancer, a new research has found.

Meanwhile, the report also found that both total fruit and vegetable intake – especially apples and dark yellow vegetables - lowers risk of distal colon cancer, however an increased risk for rectal cancer was found with increasing consumption of fruit juice. Previous studies on CRC have often failed to distinguish between the different sites of origin of cancers in the large bowel - proximal colon, distal colon and rectal. “Fruits and vegetables have been examined extensively in nutritional research in relation to CRC, however, their protective effect has been subject to debate, possibly because of different effects on different subsites of the large bowel,” commented lead investigator Professor Lin Fritschi, PhD, head of the Epidemiology Group at the Western Australian Institute for Medical Research, Perth, Western Australia. The findings were based on research carried out on 918 people with colorectal cancers and 1021 control patients. The authors concluded that “from a public health point of view it is easier to translate food-based analyses into dietary recommendations, rather than using the intake of single nutrient.” ANI