Vegetable consumption helps with reducing the risk of cancer
Most of us are aware that eating enough vegetables is essential for having a healthy body. In particularly, we often think of eating enough vegetables as being just about keeping weight where we want it to be. Whilst this can definitely help, achieving a healthy weight isn’t just what eating enough veggies is all about.
Adequate consumption of vegetables has also been shown to be protective for heart health, improving blood pressure, improving gut health, and, reducing risk of a number of types of cancer.
Most of us can think of at least one person (if not more) who is known to us who has suffered from cancer, and whilst we don’t yet know exactly how to prevent it, or cure it, there are steps that we can take that may help reduce the risk.
Other than the obvious steps of quitting smoking, reducing alcohol consumption, being (regularly) physically active, and generally eating well what are some of the steps we can take?
A recent study showed that 2% of cancers in a Canadian city could be directly attributable to lack of fruit and vegetable consumption, with the goal in this study being to consume 5 serves per day in total of fruit and vegetables. This is actually lower than Australian guidelines, of 5 serves of vegetables and 2 serves of fruit. Given that in 2016 there was estimated to be more than 130,000 new cancer diagnoses, and only 7% of Australians are consuming enough vegetables each day, this is cause for concern.
Click here to find out how different vegetables impact different cancers.
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