Anti-cancer foods 'best together'

WASHINGTON - Eating broccoli and tomatoes together may offer better protection against prostate cancer than eating either vegetable alone, cancer researchers say.

They said their study, done on rats, supported the idea that mixtures of food compounds work together to preserve health.

It also suggested that supplements alone will not work to prevent cancer, the University of Illinois team said.

"We decided to look at these foods in combination because we believed it was a way to learn more about real diets eaten by real people," said John Erdman, a professor of food science and nutrition, who led the study.

Tomatoes are especially hailed as protective against prostate cancer, and scientists believe the anti-oxidant lycopene that makes them red may be responsible.

But Erdman and colleagues found last year that lycopene supplements did little to prevent cancer in rats.

Broccoli is also believed to help prevent cancer, because it contains compounds called glucosinolates, and perhaps other healthful molecules.

For the latest study the researchers fed rats dried, powdered tomato, dried broccoli, or a combination of both. A fourth group of rats was fed finasteride, a drug shown to reduce the benign growth of the prostate and also being tested for its potential to prevent prostate cancer.

The rats were all injected with human prostate tumours. This mimics human cancer to a certain degree.

The rats developed tumours, but in those given the food supplements the tumours grew more slowly and stayed smaller than in those given finasteride, Erdman found.

The rats given both broccoli and tomato had the smallest tumours.

- REUTERS