How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease

by Michael Greger

so revved up.102 Might this process work for those cooked meat carcinogens as well? To find out, researchers fed a group of nonsmokers pan-fried meat. They then measured the levels of heterocyclic amines circulating in their bodies by sampling their urine. For two weeks, the study subjects added about three cups of broccoli and brussels sprouts to their daily diets and then ate the same meat meal. Though they consumed the same quantity of carcinogens, significantly less came out in their urine, consistent with the subjects’ broccoli-boosted liver detox ability.103 What happened next was unexpected. The subjects stopped eating their veggies and, two weeks later, tried eating the meat meal again. Presumably, their ability to detox carcinogens would by then have reverted back down to baseline. But instead, the subjects’ liver function remained enhanced even weeks later.104 This finding suggests that not only might a heaping side of broccoli with your steak decrease carcinogen exposure but also that eating your veggies days or even weeks before the big barbecue may help shore up your defenses. Choosing the veggie burger may be the safest choice, though, as it may have no heterocyclic amines to detoxify.105 So are women who eat a lot of green vegetables less likely to get breast cancer? A study of fifty thousand African American women (a sadly neglected demographic in medical research, but a population group who