An Apple a Day Keeps Breast Cancer Away

ITHACA, N.Y.—Six studies published in the past year by a Cornell researcher add to growing evidence that an apple a day, and daily helpings of other fruits and vegetables, may help prevent breast cancer.

In a paper published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, Rui Hai Liu, Cornell associate professor of food science and a member of Cornell's Institute for Comparative and Environmental Toxicology, reported that fresh apple extracts significantly inhibited the size of mammary tumors in rats—and the more extracts they were given, the greater the inhibition.

In his latest study, he found that a type of adenocarcinoma—a highly malignant tumor and the main cause of death of breast-cancer patients, as well as of animals with mammary cancer—was evident in 81 percent of tumors in the control animals. However, it developed in only 57 percent, 50 percent and 23 percent of the rats fed low, middle and high doses of apple extracts (the equivalent of one, three and six apples a day in humans), respectively, during the 24-week study.