 This study on cooked meat and the risk of breast cancer in Long Island women added to the accumulating evidence that consumption of meats cooked by methods that promote carcinogen formation may increase the risk of post-menopausal breast cancer. But it also offered a clue as to how we may be able to mediate that risk. A modest increased risk was found in older women eating the most grilled or barbecued smoked meats over their lifetime, about 47% increase odds of breast cancer. For those same women who also had a low fruit and vegetable intake had a higher odds ratio of 1.74%, 74% greater odds. Now low fruit and vegetable consumption may just be a marker for unhealthy habits in general, but maybe there's something in fruits and vegetables that's protective. Check out this fascinating study. To review, the consumption of cooked meat appears to predispose individuals to cancer, whereas the consumption of cruciferous vegetables is thought to protect against cancer. If you remember, it's because cabbage family vegetables boost the activity of the detoxifying enzymes in our livers. For example, if you feed people broccoli and brussel sprouts, they clear caffeine quicker, meaning if you eat a lot of these healthy vegetables, you have to drink more coffee to get the same buzz because your liver is so revved up. Same thing with cooked meat carcinogens. If you have a side of broccoli with your meat, you can significantly decrease carcinogen levels in your body. What they did is they started out with study subjects consuming cooked meat meals containing known amounts of these carcinogens. And this is the amount of the carcinogens they were absorbing into their bloodstream and then peeing out. In period 2, they ate the same amount of meat but added broccoli and brussel sprouts. Notice there's a significant drop in the amount of these meat mutagens circulating within their bodies, even though they ate the same amount of meat. Now this wasn't a surprise, and that's what cruciferous vegetables do, where they boost our liver's ability to clear chemicals from our bodies. But this is what blew them away. In period 3, again, same amount of meat, but they took away the veggies, yet their liver function appeared to remain enhanced two weeks later. So there appears to be a prolonged beneficial effect of cruciferous vegetable consumption. So you can eat broccoli days or even weeks before the big barbecue and still retain a little protection. Though of course if you eat grilled veggie burgers instead, it would be even better at that barbecue, as apparently no matter how you cook plant-based foods, even if you deep fry them, no detectable heterocyclic amines are formed.