If you could do something to prevent cancer, would you do it? You might say “yes,” but unfortunately you might not actually do it. How’s this for an alarming fact?
At least one-third of annual cancer deaths in the United States are related to dietary factors. Increased fruit and vegetable consumption can reduce cancer risk, but less than one-third of U.S. adults eat the recommended servings of fruit and vegetables every day, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Eating healthy, including fruits and vegetables loaded with phytochemicals (powerful antioxidants), and following a low fat diet helps people manage weight and prevent disease! Think about it, every day you have choices of what to eat. You have the power to keep yourself healthy from the inside out.
What’s even more is that if you do get breast cancer, you can actually prevent recurrence by following a low fat diet.
The Women’s Intervention Nutrition Study (WINS) has shown that breast cancer survivors who cut their fat intake and increase their fruit and vegetable intake reduce their recurrence rate by 24 percent. For survivors with estrogen-receptor-negative tumors, the reduction is 42 percent.
Forty-two percent chance of preventing cancer recurrence?! That’s just amazing to me.
Here’s a run down on the fruit and veggie colors and what they can do for you:
- Red – Contain nutrients such as lycopene, ellagic acid, and Quercetin. They lower blood pressure, LDL (bad) cholesterol, and reduce the risk of cancer. Anti-inflammatory properties help with arthritis too.
- Orange and Yellow – Contain beta-carotene, zeaxanthin, flavonoids, lycopene, potassium, and vitamin C. They promote eye health, reduce the risk of prostate cancer, lower LDL cholesterol and blood pressure, promote collagen formation and healthy joints.
- Green – Contain chlorophyll, fiber, lutein, zeaxanthin, calcium, folate, vitamin C, calcium, and beta-carotene. They reduce cancer risks, lower blood pressure and LDL cholesterol levels, normalize digestion time, support retinal health and vision, fight harmful free-radicals, and boost immune system activity.
- Blue and Purple – Contain nutrients which include lutein, zeaxanthin, resveratrol, vitamin C, fiber, flavonoids, ellagic acid, and quercetin. They support eye health, lower LDL cholesterol, boost immune system activity, support healthy digestion, fight inflammation, reduce tumor growth, and act as an anticarcinogens in the digestive tract.
- White – Contain nutrients such as beta-glucans, EGCG, SDG, and lignans that provide powerful immune boosting activity. These nutrients also reduce the risk of colon, breast, and prostate cancers, and balance hormone levels, reducing the risk of hormone-related cancers.
Filed under: cooking, eating healthy, food Tagged: | antioxidants, prevent cancer
Nice simple explaination. I think your first statement says it all most people have the power to prevent Cancer and Disease yet do not bother for convenience sake. It generally does not take too much longer to prepare and eat good fresh wholesome food.
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[...] from: Eat Colorful Foods to Cut Cancer Risk by 40 Percent « Balanced … This entry was written by admin and posted on April 18, 2010 at 9:38 am and filed under Cancer, [...]
Unfortunately, even with considerable knowledge available to us, we still choose not to do the right thing when it comes to eating well. So much of the costs of disease that we bear as a society are as a result of poor day to day choices like these. In many cases, we would benefit from incentives to do the right thing.