International Specialty Supply
Supplying Sprout Companies Throughout the World
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International Specialty Supply Supplying Sprout Companies Throughout the World
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Power Sprouts HEALTH SEPTEMBER 29, 1997 VOL. 150 NO. 13 George
Bush may have been right about broccoli after all. According to a team of
scientists from Johns Hopkins University, you don't have to eat a full helping
of the hated vegetable to get the health benefits; a spoonful of crunchy
broccoli sprouts will do the trick. Writing in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Science, the researchers report that three-day-old broccoli sprouts
(which look something like alfalfa sprouts) contain the same cancer-fighting
chemical, called sulforaphane, as full-grown spears--but
at concentrations 20 to 50 times as high. This
is not the first time that scientists have lauded broccoli's anticancer
benefits. Johns Hopkins' Dr. Paul Talalay and his colleagues first isolated
sulforaphane from broccoli in 1992. Tests showed that the compound reduced the
incidence of breast tumors in rats by 60%. While vitamin E and other
antioxidants attack rogue cancer-causing molecules directly, sulforaphane works
indirectly by boosting the body's cancer-fighting defenses. Not all broccoli
plants are created equal, however. The amount of sulforaphane found in fresh
broccoli varies wildly, making the vegetable an unreliable anticancer agent. That's
where the sprouts come
in. After analyzing 50 different varieties of broccoli, the Hopkins researchers
discovered that 15 of those strains produced seedlings with extraordinarily high
concentrations of sulforaphane. The sprouts have a mildly spicy taste, which
should make them more palatable than full-grown broccoli, especially when
sprinkled on sandwiches and salads. But you probably won't find them at your
local health-food store--not yet, anyway. And Talalay cautions do-it-yourselfers
against trying to grow their own sprouts. Most broccoli seeds, he notes, are
soaked in fungicides and pesticides. --Reported
by David Bjerklie/New York |