Fight Cancer with Your Garden

May 10th, 2016

That title is not as preposterous as it might sound.

Fresh food but also a way to prevent cancer?

Pretty much everyone agrees that fresh vegetables are generally healthy, but a food-science researcher at Penn State University says that whole fruits, vegetables and grains might pose one of our best cancer-fighting hopes.

Dr. Jairam Vanamala is a Penn State professor and faculty member at Penn State Hershey Cancer Institute.

He’s concerned about a projected 57 percent worldwide increase in new cancer cases in the next 20 years and doubts that we’re likely to find any single “silver bullet” cure.

Instead, he thinks we’re much better off looking for ways to protect against and prevent cancer before tumors ever get started.

Vanamala believes the most promising weapon is the food we harvest from our farms and gardens.

“Accumulating evidence suggests that a diet high in plant-based foods is preventive of a variety of chronic diseases, including cancer,” he says.

Produce is apparently loaded with all sorts of bioactive compounds – polyphenols, glucosinolates, carotenoids and such – that Vanamala says have been shown to suppress tumor growth.

Researchers have been attempting to isolate those compounds and trial them in cancer studies. But to date, most haven’t been very successful.

Vanamala believes that’s because it’s not any single compound that can slam the door on cancer but the “synergy” from the complex mix of compounds in our edible plants.

He says it’s a field that’s widely unstudied.

It’s also an uphill battle, even if substantiated.

For one thing, people are notorious about not listening to Mom and eating more vegetables.

Despite the supposed increase lately in vegetable gardening, I still don’t see many yards with edibles growing in them.

And despite stepped-up healthy-eating efforts, Americans are eating 7 percent fewer fruits and vegetables than 5 years ago, according to the Produce for Better Health Foundation.

Another potential issue is that today’s produce often is less nutrition-packed than the crops of yesteryear.

Vanamala suggests that’s because breeders have focused mainly on increased yield, better bug- and disease-resistance, improved shelf life, appearance and food safety – all important factors – but with little attention paid to maintaining or boosting nutrition content.

That would seem to make another good argument for the rebirth of heirloom varieties, which gardeners tend to like because of generally better taste and the ability to save their seeds for next year’s garden.

Vanamala thinks we might have better luck in using produce to prevent cancer by looking back than looking forward.

“Gene banks in many countries around the world have preserved genetic material for a variety of major crops,” says Vanamala. “These resources could be used in the future for developing cultivars with better health-promoting and disease-preventing properties.”

Colorful varieties of vegetables are usually more nutritious than pale-colored ones.

If you scan the seed catalogs, you’ll run across varieties available to home gardeners that were bred with nutrition in mind.

The ‘A Plus’ carrot and ‘Health Kick’ tomato are two that come to mind.

Something else that usually makes a nutrition-boosting difference – planting the most colorful vegetables.

Blue potatoes have more nutrition than white ones, dark red carrots have more nutrition than pale yellow ones, and red leafy crops are more nutritious than green ones.

Bucks County-based W. Atlee Burpee Co. tried to make that point a few years ago with a campaign urging people to plant, grow and eat a “rainbow of colors” from their gardens. It also developed a line of Boost varieties bred for high nutrition.

If you want to read more about milking the most nutrition out of your home-grown plants, Mother Earth News published a good primer on the topic heading into last growing season.

In the meantime, this is prime time to get out there and dig up some of the lawn and put in your “Cancer-Fighting Garden.”

Plant a variety of plants, make them as colorful as possible, harvest them at the peak of maturity, and eat them raw or only lightly cooked.

Even if the nutrients don’t do diddly against cancer, at least the exercise will do you some good.