HHS HealthBeat (August 07, 2007)

Fruits, veggies and breast cancer

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

Eating lots of fruits and veggies, like five servings a day, is good for you. And some experts in breast cancer thought more fruits and veggies as part of a low-fat eating pattern might even be better – a way to keep breast cancer from returning.

But when a researcher looked for changes over about six years of data on more than 3,000 survivors, he found huge servings of fruits and vegetables didn’t help. John Pierce of the University of California, San Diego says it didn’t cut the rate at which cancer returned, or the death rate:

``What this study shows is you don’t need to go 10 a day in vegetables and fruits. Five a day is enough.’’ (six seconds)

The study in the Journal of the American Medical Association was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Learn more at hhs.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I’m Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: August, 07 2007