This is the time of year when food is vibrant. Bright red raspberries and crimson tomatoes sit alongside purple-black and yellow-orange varieties, and new colors seem to emerge each season.
The colors aren’t just for show — they come from powerful chemicals in the plants, helping them survive against a brutal garden world. When eaten, those tiny molecular machines are equally powerful tools for people, helping us combat disease.
Called phytochemicals, this broad category of protective molecules tackles hundreds of jobs in each plant, from absorbing the effects of constant sunlight, to fighting off hungry insects, to drawing bees to flowers, to warding off illness.
All plants have the chemicals, which interact with each other in complicated ways. In our bodies, phytochemicals go through an equally complicated dance, and clinical trials are revealing them as tools for preventing disease. In fact, some studies of fruits have been so promising that they’re part of clinical trials with cancer patients.
[See: 6 Ways to Train Your Brain for Healthy Eating.]
Some Phytochemicals Are Good, Others Are Really Good
For several decades, scientists have studied phytochemicals in foods, looking at their effects in groups of people or in laboratory studies with animals, and results have been promising.
At The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center — Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute, many of our latest studies focus on whole fruits as part of a dietary pattern instead of single ingredients, as that’s how people are going to best absorb the powerful phytochemicals within. All of a plant’s chemicals interact, and that impacts how our bodies use them — that’s why taking a nutritional supplement rarely improves health, especially when compared to eating healthy foods.
For more than 20 years, we’ve looked at black raspberries, offering them to study participants as a whole fruit, but also in a range of forms from powders to nectar — even as custom gummy confections made in-house. In initial studies, we’re finding black raspberry phytochemicals may be useful in cancers of the oral cavity.
We’ve also been looking at “tangerine” tomatoes. Like all tomatoes, they contain a powerful phytochemical called lycopene, but the form of lycopene in a tangerine tomato is better absorbed. In fact, a recent study at the OSUCCC — James found some people can absorb more than eight times more lycopene from tangerine tomatoes than from standard red ones.
[See: 10 Healthy Meals You Can Make in 10 Minutes.]
Dig In
But if tangerine tomatoes and black raspberries aren’t on your grocery store shelf, fear not — even the more common berries, from blueberries to strawberries, have powerful phytochemicals and should be included in an overall dietary pattern that can reduce the risk of cancer.
There is no single food that can prevent or treat cancer. A better strategy is to eat a variety of fruits, vegetables and whole grains each day. And just as the benefits of whole foods involve lots of complex interactions, they can also interact with medications — including chemotherapy — so always keep your doctor informed about any diet changes, even something as simple and healthy as adding fruit.
[See: 10 Healthy Habits of the ‘Naturally’ Thin.]
Beth Grainger, PhD, is a dietitian and cancer-fighting foods researcher at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center — Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute.
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