Healthy Grocery Foods list (.pdf)
click to print or download
from M D Anderson website.

Before you head out to the grocery store to stock up on holiday foods you might like to print or download this 45 healthy foods shopping list pulled together by Mary Ellen Herndon, wellness food specialist, and other experts at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Evidence for obesity as a promoter of several types of cancer as well as heart disease and diabetes in increasing. Adults can avoid holiday weight gain, Herndon says, by stocking up on the cancer-fighting foods on this holiday food grocery list. Naturally, the list is rich in vegetables and fruits — from acorn squash, berries and dates to pears, quinces, sweet potatoes, Swiss chard and turnips– and in grains, beans, and lean non-red meat protein sources. Also included are  pecans, pistachios, walnuts, and dark chocolate.

“Plant foods are packed with cancer-fighting nutrients,” Herndon says. “So, make sure you fill two-thirds of your plate with vegetables, fruits, whole grains or beans. On the remaining one-third of your plate, choose a lean animal or plant protein.”

Men should aim for meals with no more than 500 calories, she adds, and women aim for no more than 400 calories.

“People tend to gain weight in colder months because they’re indoors more, less active and overeat high calorie, holiday foods,” said Herndon says. “And, unhealthy weight gain, in the long-run, may make it harder for the body to fight off diseases like cancer.”

Currently, NIH factsheet for Obesity and Cancer Risk lists just 8 types of cancer by name: Esophagus · Pancreas · Colon · and rectum · Breast (after menopause) · Endometrium (lining of the uterus) · Kidney · Thyroid · Gallbladder.

So what about prostate cancer? Studies are beginning to demonstrate that obesity is associated with prostate cancer aggressiveness and survival chances.

Prostate enlargement (BPH) is common with aging and obesity.  But even in men who do not develop BPH, Vanderbilt University researchers have found,  there are links between prostate cancer and obesity.

And by examining what happens to fat genes if a thicker than normal layer of fat builds up around the prostate, a team of Canadian, Portuguese and Spanish geneticists and oncologists have discovered one way that obesity promotes aggressive prostate cancer (more to come on this in our MedNews section).

Meanwhile, to make your holiday food shopping list nice, not naughty (except for a bit of dark chocolate), follow Mary Ellen Herndon’s lead and select from these foods:

Mary Ellen Herndon

 Fresh, in-season fruits and vegetables
Acorn squash
Belgian endive
Broccoli
Brussels sprouts
Butternut squash
Cauliflower
Cranberries
Dates
Garlic
Kale
Leeks
Mushrooms
Pears
Persimmons
Pomegranates
Pumpkin
Quince
Sweet potatoes
Swiss chard
Turnips

Grains
Quinoa
Wild rice
Brown rice
Lentils

Dairy
Skim milk
Non-fat Greek yogurt

Protein
Lean turkey or chicken
Lean fish such as salmon, halibut, redfish or red snapper
Tofu
Almonds
Pistachios
Walnuts
Pecans
Garbanzo beans/chickpeas (low sodium if canned)
Black, red, pinto or white beans  (low sodium if canned)

Frozen foods
Get more nutrients by buying this out-of-season produce frozen.
Berries (preferably organic)
Carrots
Collard greens
Green beans
Rhubarb
Sweet corn

Baking aisle
Cinnamon
Cooking spray
Dark chocolate
Whole wheat flour

Scientists at Oregon State University and Linus Pauling Institute propose in an article published October 7 that sulforaphane, a compound found in cruciferous vegetables notably broccoli, may be useful as a chemopreventive agent for high-risk prostate cancer patients. Sulforaphane, Emily Ho and colleagues write, acts as a histone deacetylase inhibitor on prostate cancer (and colorectal cancer) cells.

A large, long-term study in the U.K. has found that people who eat fish or who are vegetarians are less likely to develop cancer than people who describe themselves as meat-eaters. Surprisingly, for some types of cancer, risk was lower for those who ate fish than for strict vegetarians.

Led by a team at Oxford University, researchers studied 61,566 British men and women for several years. More than half of the people enrolled or 32,403 identified as meat eaters, 8562 as non-meat eaters who did eat fish (“fish eaters”‘) and 20,601 as vegetarians.

Some of the difference favoring fish consumption over vegetarianism may arise from known benefits of fish oil and some from known or risks from high consumption of dairy foods.

Men with prostate cancer who consumed the active compounds in green tea demonstrated a significant reduction in serum markers predictive of prostate cancer progression, according to results of a study published in Cancer Prevention Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

March 24, 2009 /PHILADELPHIA, AACR / – Omega-3 fatty acids appear protective against advanced prostate cancer, and this effect may be modified by a genetic variant in the COX-2 gene, according to a report in Clinical Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

“The COX-2 increased risk of disease was essentially reversed by increasing omega-3 fatty acid intake by a half a gram per day,” said John S. Witte, Ph.D., professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California San Francisco.

If men want to interpret the results in terms of adding omega-3 rich fish to their regular diet, he said, “the strongest effect was seen from eating dark fish such as salmon one or more times per week.”

This study used grape seeds

An extract from grape seeds forces laboratory leukemia cells to self destruct, or commit cell suicide, according to researchers from the University of Kentucky. Within 24 hours of exposure to the extract, three-quarters of leukemia cells die off.

The researchers say that this proves the value of natural compounds. In making their discovery, they teased apart the cell signaling pathway associated with use of grape seed extract that led to the cell-suicide. This self-destructive process, known as apoptosis, normally gets rid of damaged or aberrant cells.

New research in an animal model suggests that a diet high in inorganic phosphates, which are found in a variety of processed foods including meats, cheeses, beverages, and bakery products, might speed growth of lung cancer tumors and may even contribute to the development of those tumors in individuals predisposed to the disease.

Karen Kaplan reports in the L.A. Times on the crushingly disappointing results from a series of clinical trials that have shown that daily doses of vitamins and minerals have no effect on preventing strokes, heart disease or other ailments and in some cases, even cause harm.

Laboratory tests and initial studies in people suggested that lowly vitamins could play a crucial role in preventing some of the most intractable illnesses, especially in an aging population. The National Institutes of Health gave them the same treatment as top-notch pharmaceutical drugs, investing hundreds of millions of dollars in elaborate clinical trials designed to quantify their disease-fighting abilities.

Now the results from those trials are rolling in, and nearly all of them fail to show any benefit from taking vitamin and mineral supplements.

This month, two long-term trials with more than 50,000 participants offered fresh evidence that vitamin C, vitamin E and selenium supplements don’t reduce the risk of prostate, colorectal, lung, bladder or pancreatic cancer. Other recent studies have found that over-the-counter vitamins and minerals offer no help in fighting other cancers, stroke or cardiovascular disease.

Kaplan interviews Jeffrey Blumberg, director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Antioxidants Research Laboratory at Tufts University in Boston. His research, she notes, has been funded in part by supplement makers.

Blumberg says, “You really do need vitamin E. You really do need vitamin C. You really do need seleniun,” adding, “Without them, you die.”

This begs the question of whether taking them in supplement form fends off illnesses.

“Blumberg and others now believe.” Kaplan writes, “that a combination of factors — including the versions of vitamins that were tested and the populations they were tested in — probably doomed the studies from the start.”

Kaplan also interviews Dr. Mary L. Hardy, medical director of the Simms/Mann UCLA Center for Integrative Oncology, “who focuses on the importance of diet and supplements for cancer patients.”

“‘You don’t eat a food that just has beta carotene in it,’” Hardy tells Kaplan. “What’s more, she said, vitamins manufactured into pills are not identical to vitamins that occur naturally in foods, so the clinical trials don’t test the exact compounds that may have been key in earlier studies.

Full story from L. A. Times December 21, 2008

Prenatal exposure to famine can lead to changes in the embryo’s genes that may affect the adult person’s health into midlife, according to researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and the Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands. Their findings show a trickle-down effect from pregnant women to the DNA of their unborn children and the timeframe over which such early damage can operate.

Previous studies have suggested that adult disease risk may be associated with unsuitable or adverse environmental conditions early in development. The data for this study are first to show that early-life environmental conditions can cause what are called epigenetic (epi= “on” + genetic) changes in humans that persist throughout life.

In Holland in 1944-45 during World War II a food embargo led to famine. Research indicates that children conceived during the Dutch Hunger Winter experienced detrimental health effects six decades later. Pre-natal exposure to the famine has been associated with cardiovascular disease and diabetes in later life.

Separate, related studies suggest possible associations of specific pre-natal nutritional imbalances and even of maternal over-nutrition with other health conditions including cancer.

An anti-cancer compound in broccoli and cabbage, indole-3-carbinol, is undergoing clinical trials in men with prostate cancer and women with breast cancer because it was found to stop the growth of these cancers in mice.

Now scientists have discovered more about how it works. They’ve found that in breast cancer it lowers the activity of an enzyme associated with rapidly advancing cancer growth, according to a University of California, Berkeley, study appearing this week in the online early edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The new findings are claimed as the first to explain how indole-3-carbinol (I3C) stops cell growth. This new understanding is expected to speed designs for improved versions of the chemical that would be more effective as a drug and could work against a broader range of breast as well as prostate tumors.