Study Says Fruit And Veg Has Little Direct Effect On Cancer, But Indirect Effect Is Considerable

obesity is statistically the second largest cause of cancer after smoking

There has been a lot of talk in medical circles recently after a study came out with the conclusion that eating a lot of fruit and vegetables had only a very slight and marginal affect on lowering the chances of you suffering from cancer. Traditionally fruits and vegetables have been touted as one of the most effective forms of cancer prevention.

The new research which looked at medical data from almost half a million men and women in ten European nations only discovered a slight link between lower cancer rates and high consumption of fruits and vegetables. They did note however that those people who drank heavily but who also consumed fruits and vegetables had a reduced risk but these tended to be only those cancers linked to smoking and alcohol.

Dr. Paolo Boffetta from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York explained however that those people who tended to eat higher amounts of fruit and vegetables also tended to drink less, not smoke and do more exercise all of which contributed in their own way to lowering the cancer risk.

Possibly the most important fact which was not mentioned however was that people who eat fruits and vegetables tended to be healthier by virtue of the fact that they are of a healthy weight. Overweight and obese individuals, and these are the ones who very rarely consume fruit and vegetables, are at a much higher risk of cancer. In fact obesity is statistically the second largest cause of cancer after smoking.

So even though the direct cancer prevention properties of eating fruits and vegetables are only modest the fact that it has been proven that they prevent obesity means that they have a much more significant indirect cancer prevention role which should not be underestimated. Anybody who tries to use this recent study as an excuse not to eat fruits and vegetables would be seriously misguided.  The full research was published by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.