Fruits And Vegetables Have a Small Effect Impact on Cancer
By admin on 2015-01-06

Eating lots of fruits and vegetables has only a small effect on warding off cancer, a study published Wednesday says, although its authors insist that tucking into the recommended "five-a-day" is still good for general health.

Doctors led by Paolo Boffetta at the Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York, pored over eight years of data from a major European investigation into the relationship between cancer risk and food.

The investigation, which is continuing, covers nearly 470,000 volunteers recruited in 10 Western European countries.

Between 1992 and 2000, more than 30,000 of the participants were diagnosed with cancer.

Boffetta's team found that high consumption of fruits and vegetables gave only a modest protective effect against cancer.

An increase of 200 grams a day resulted in a reduction of cancer risk in the order of about 3 percent.

Vegetable consumption by itself also provided a small benefit, although this was restricted to women, while heavy drinkers who ate a lot of fruits and vegetables had a somewhat reduced risk, but only for cancers linked to alcohol and smoking.

"The bottom line here is that, yes, we did find a protective effect of fruit and vegetable intake against cancer, but it is a smaller connection than previously thought," Boffetta said.

"Eating fruits and vegetables is beneficial for health in general, and the results of this study do not justify changing current recommendations aiming at increasing intake of these foods."

The UN's World Health Organization issued a recommendation in 1990 suggesting that five servings of fruits and vegetables per day helped prevent cancer and other diseases.