The Pink Page
An Apple a Day ...
When it comes to keeping the doctor away, apples may actually do the trick. Six recent studies have shown that increasing amounts of fresh apple extract had an inhibitory effect on the mammary tumors in rats. The study highlights the importance of phytochemicals, also known as phenolics, found in apples and other fruits and vegetables.
"We not only observed that the treated animals had fewer tumors, but the tumors were smaller, less malignant and grew more slowly compared with the tumors in the untreated rats," says Rui Hai Liu, Cornell University associate professor of food science and a member of Cornell's Institute for Comparative and Environmental Toxicology, Ithaca, N.Y.
Results showed that compared to the 81 percent of the control group that developed adenocarcinoma, a highly malignant tumor and the main cause of death for breast cancer patients, rats fed either low, medium or high amounts of apple extracts - the equivalent of either one, three or six apples a day in humans - only developed the tumor 57, 50 and 23 percent of the time respectively.
"These studies add to the growing evidence that increased consumption of fruits and vegetables, including apples, would provide consumers with more phenolics, which are proving to have important health benefits," Liu says. "I would encourage consumers to eat more and a wide variety of fruits and vegetables daily."
According to Liu, apples provide 33 percent of the phenolics that Americans consume annually. His study also found that apple phytochemicals inhibit an important inflammation pathway in human breast cancer cells.
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