Fruits, veggies may reduce lung cancer risk--study

Consuming a healthy diet can benefit tobacco users in particular, but diversity in food is as important as quantity.

Researchers aver that eating five portions of fruits and vegetables a day helps preventing cancer in the long run.

"This research looks more deeply into the relationship between diet and lung cancer," said María Jose Sanchez Perez, co-author of the study and director of the Granada Cancer Registry at the Andalusian School of Public Health.

"Aside from the amount consumed, it's also important to take into account the variety. A varied diet reduces the risk of developing this cancer, above all in smokers," she added.

Study details and findings
For the study, Perez and his colleagues collected data from the ongoing, multi-centered European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) study, and evaluated the history of more than 500000 participants.

EPIC is a large study of diet and health conducted on over half a million people in ten European countries like Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

Findings of the study revealed that eating more than eight types of vegetables cuts the risk of epidermoid carcinoma of the lung by 23 percent compared to eating less than four types of vegetables a day.

Furthermore, researchers found that with addition of each novel fruit or vegetable in the diet a day, the likelihood of getting cancer decreases by four percent.

Perez said, "A significant link was only found in smokers. For every two additional units of different kinds of fruits and vegetables in the diet, the risk of lung cancer falls significantly by 3 per cent. So if smokers increase the variety of fruit they eat they could have a lower risk of developing this type of cancer.”

According to previous researches, fruits and vegetables contain certain bioactive compounds and consuming a mixture of these rich compounds may help lower cancer risk.

The study was published in the 'Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention,' a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.