Tomatoes & Broccoli

Vital ingredients to cure cancer can be found in your very own garden if scientists are to be believed.

Forget all those bitter drugs, ingredients to cure cancer can be found in your very own vegetable garden if researchers are to be believed.

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According to BBC, the research led by scientists at the Food Science and Human Nutrition at the University of Illinois, indicates that eating tomatoes and broccoli together may offer better protection against cancer than eating either vegetable alone. Both vegetables are known to contain cancer-fighting chemicals but they interact together to maximise the effect.

According to Dr John Erdman, the lead researcher, "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.

People don't eat nutrients, they eat food. And they don't eat one food, they eat many foods in combination."

Erdman's team examined how different food and nutrient combinations affected the growth of prostate tumors in rats.

Rats that ate a combination of broccoli and tomato powders had less growth of their tumors than rats who ate either of the two powders alone and rats given diets supplemented with lycopene.

A final group of rats was fed a normal diet and given a drug commonly prescribed to men with benign growth of the prostate which is also being tested for its potential to prevent prostate cancer.

"These preliminary results suggest that there is, in fact, an interactive protective effect between tomatoes and broccoli.

Separately, these two foods appear to have enormous cancer-fighting potential. Together, they bring out the best in each other and maximise the cancer-fighting effect," Erdman said.