Researchers rounded up a group of longtime smokers and asked them to consume twenty-five times more broccoli than the average American—in other words, a single stalk a day. Compared to broccoli-avoiding smokers, the broccoli-eating smokers suffered 41 percent fewer DNA mutations in their bloodstream over ten days. Is that just because the broccoli boosted the activity of the detoxifying enzymes in their livers, which helped clear carcinogens before they even made it to the smokers’ cells? No, even when DNA was extracted from the subjects’ bodies and exposed to a known DNA-damaging chemical,
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