Science Meets Reality

A study shows there is as much as 50 times more anti-cancer chemical in broccoli sprouts than in the mature vegetable, and the sprouts don’t taste like broccoli.

"Three-day-broccoli sprouts, tender shoots topped with leaves, are loaded with concentrated form of sulforaphane, a powerful cancer fighter, “say researchers at Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Paul Talalay, head of a team at Hopkins that discovered sulforaphane five years ago, said he was surprised that the sprouts contained such a high level of the anti-cancer compound.

A report on the research is being published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Earlier studies have shown that suforaphane prompts the body to make an enzyme that prevents tumors from forming. Sulforaphane is found in all cruciferous (cabbage family) vegetables, including cabbage, kale, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower and mustard greens. A 1994 study indicated that cancer development was reduced by 60 to 80 percent in laboratory animals that were fed sulforaphone extracted from broccoli.

Talalay said diet studies have shown that eating two pounds of broccoli a week – an unappetizing thought to many – can provide enough sulforaphone to lower colon-cancer risk by half.

But Talalay said his lab has found that the sulforaphane content in broccoli from a grocery store can vary by a factor of eight or ten and there is no way to identify a vegetable loaded with the compounds from one that is not.

Broccoli sprouts might solve the problem, Talalay said, because the baby plants have a uniformly high level of sulforaphane. “Because of the content, it is possible to consume far lower quantities of the sprouts and get the same protection, “he said.

“Broccoli sprouts resemble the alfalfa sprouts common in grocery stores, but they have more flavor,” Talalay said. And the broccoli sprouts do not have the sharp tang of mature broccoli that many people, such as former President Bush, find unpleasant.

For four decades Hippocrates has utilized sprouts in healing. Science finally is beginning to realize how powerful this food-medicine is. If we give them until the year 3000 they may even realize that we all should be eating living food.

There are a wide variety of sprouts including sunflower, cabbage, radish, turnip and fenugreek that have a much higher degree of photochemical effects which retard cancer and a wide variety of other menacing diseases.

Vol 16 Issue 4 page 6