Expert lists foods people should eat to cut their risk of cancer – Gloucestershire Live
For years, Brits have been encouraged to consume five portions of fruit and veg a day as a golden rule for health. The belief is that these five servings will supply all the essential vitamins and nutrients required for a healthy lifestyle.
However, you might have noticed a shift in this message, with a new goal emerging – consuming 30 different plants each week. If you thought five portions of fruit and veg daily was challenging, then the idea of 30 different plants weekly may seem somewhat intimidating.
But there is a silver lining. This new target does not just include fruits and vegetables, but also whole grains like oats and brown rice, legumes such as lentils and beans, plus nuts, seeds, herbs and spices. The concept is that a more diverse diet increases your chances of getting all the nutrients you need.
This also means some unexpected items make the list, including coffee, and dark chocolate with 70 per cent or more cocoa solids, as they are technically derived from seeds. Tofu, made from soya, also counts. Eating the same food twice doesn’t count, but eating the same food in a different colour does. So, red and green peppers would be considered two separate foods.
Chomping down on five portions of fruit and veg a day is still an excellent target for good health, but the 30 plants a week goal is championed by none other than Tim Spector, professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London and ZOE’s scientific co-founder.
He reckons that a varied diet packed with different foods could slash your cancer risk and keep you sprightly in your later years. Celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is also getting in on the act.
Chatting on BBC’s Morning Live, he said: “One minute we are talking about five a day, the next minute we are urging people to eat 30 different plants a week. An interesting distinction though, when we say plants, we are talking about plants in the widest possible sense. So that is not just fruit and vegetables, but plant ingredients like pulses, nuts, seeds, lots of store cupboard things, things from the freezer.”
“It is worth doing because this diversity in plants in your diet is going to keep you super-well, but we aren’t going to do it if it isn’t fun and delicious.[“
Hugh, who’s just dropped a fresh book with a foreword by Prof Spector himself, spilled the beans on how the science pinpointed 30 as the golden number of plant varieties to aim for each week.
The chef elaborated, “]It was a bit of accidental science. The original study was looking at whether vegetarians, vegans or omnivores had the healthiest gut microbiome and the best long-term outcomes, and actually they couldn’t find any difference between them.”
“But because 11,000 people in the study had all meticulously kept these food diaries writing down everything they ate, the next level of the study looked at how many plants people were eating. And it did stand out that the more plants people were eating, the more healthy and diverse their gut biome was and the better their long-term outcomes.”
“Thirty is the peak number because the benefits keep going after 30 but they plateau a little bit after that. Also, quite a few people in the study were already eating 30 a week, so we know we can do it.”
