No Cancer Shield Found in Fruit and Vegetable Diet

A seven-year government experiment in more than 3,000 women found no benefit from a diet that included far more than the recommended servings of five fruits and vegetables a day. The study appears in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Association. For now, the message for the 2.4 million breast cancer survivors in the United States is that they do not need to go overboard on vegetables, researchers said. In this experiment, all the women had been successfully treated for early stage breast cancer. Their average age was 53 when the study began. A group of 1,537 women were randomly assigned to a daily diet that included five vegetable servings, three fruit servings, 16 ounces of vegetable juice and 30 grams of fiber. In most cases, a serving equaled a half cup. French fries and iceberg lettuce could not be counted as vegetables. The women were allowed to eat meat, but were told to get no more than 15 percent to 20 percent of their calories from fat. As a comparison, an additional 1,551 women were assigned to get educational materials about the importance of eating five servings of fruits and vegetables a day. During the next seven years, the cancer returned in about the same proportion of women in both groups. About 10 percent of both groups died during that time, most of them from breast cancer.

Bonnie - this is disgusting. If you are talking about cancer prevention, you cannot look at people who have already had it because their immune system is already compromised.

Update 7/26/2007 - isn't it interesting that a study to appear in the August issue of Journal of the National Cancer Institute says men who often eat broccoli and cauliflower may be less likely to develop aggressive prostate cancer than men who skimp on those vegetables. The finding comes from a study of more than 29,000 U.S. men aged 55-74 who were followed for an average of four years. When the study started, the men didn't have prostate cancer. They completed surveys about the foods they typically ate. During the study, the men were regularly screened for prostate cancer. A total of 1,338 men were diagnosed with prostate cancer, including 520 men with aggressive prostate cancer. The men who reported frequently eating cruciferous vegetables -- which include broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, mustard greens, and turnip greens -- were 40% less likely to be diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer during the study than men who rarely ate those vegetables.

This study was geared towards prevention!