Cruciferous Vegetables and Cancer

Cruciferous vegetables are considered to be healthy foods. There are numerous cultivars including broccoli, cauliflowers, bok choy, Chinese broccoli, kale, napa, brussels sprouts, radish, mustard, cress, rutabaga, cabbage etc. Basically all the vegetables a kid does not like. We have been told to eat them by our grandmothers, parents, scientists, pretty much everybody. I did not like any vegetables as a child and remember being forced to drink the juice of bok choy as a punishment because I refused to eat vegetables.

Eventually I started to like vegetables. Now I love them, or at least some of them. I still do not like rutabaga and cabbage, but I tolerate them.

These vegetables are high in Vitamin C, fiber and phytochemicals that are potentially anticancer. One of the phytochemicals is sulforaphane, which was shown by this recent study to specifically targeting cancer cells and kill them while leaving healthy prostate cells unaffected. It kills bacterial caused of ulcers and stomach cancer. Sulforaphane has even been shown to inhibit the occurrence of hereditary colon cancer (here). Need more reasons to eat vegetables? Eating cruciferous vegetables might even guard against arthritis (here).

The American Cancer Society estimates that more than two-thirds of cancer may be prevented through lifestyle modification, and nearly one-third of these cancer occurrences can be attributed to diet alone.

However, lifestyle modification needs to be radical in order for us to achieve our goal.

I have lowered my blood pressure through radical lifestyle change from stage 1 hypertension/ prehypertension to now prehypertention/ desirable within one week (i.e. my blood pressure went hovering around 140-150/90-100 to now hovering around 115-129/75-89 (not from eating cruciferous vegetables). This is another subject.