Mom was right: eat your vegetables!

Kids aren’t the only ones who should be nagged to pile more vegetables on their dinner plate. A new study shows that men who regularly ate broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, Brussels sprouts and turnips were 40 percent less likely to develop aggressive prostate cancer that spread outside the prostate than those who consumed few of these veggies.

Lead author Victoria Kirsh, Ph.D., a former doctoral student under the advisorship of Susan T. Mayne, Ph.D., professor of epidemiology, says that chemicals found in these and other “cruciferous” plants (named for their cross-shaped flowers) help prevent cancer. “All these vegetables have compounds called glucosinolates that have been shown to protect cells from DNA damage in the lab, and thus may be anti-carcinogenic” explains Kirsh, now at Cancer Care Ontario in Toronto, Canada.

Kirsh says she would like to see the findings, published in the August 1 issue of JNCI: Journal of the National Cancer Institute, replicated in additional studies. In the meantime, though, it can’t hurt to eat your broccoli.