There’s more good news from the garden: A compound in carrots may be a potent cancer fighter, reducing malignancies in rats by a third, a European study claims."One of the natural pesticides in carrots is responsible for the cancer-preventing effect of carrots,” said lead researcher Kirsten Brandt, a senior lecturer at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, in England. “We now have identified a compound which seems to have an effect that can explain this benefit."Nutrition experts have long recommended that people eat carrots because of their apparent ability to prevent cancer, but, until now, the particular compound driving this effect was not known. Epidemiological studies have shown that individuals with the highest carrot consumption can lower their risk of cancer by up to 40 percent.Now, Brandt’s team says that falcarinol, a compound that protects the vegetable from fungal diseases, may be the prime reason carrots are so unfriendly to cancers. One previous study had suggested that might be the case, but results were inconclusive.To find out if falcarinol really does prevent cancer, Brandt’s team studied 24 rats with precancerous tumors that mimicked human colorectal cancer. The rats were assigned to three groups, and each group was given a different diet.After 18 weeks, Brandt’s group found that rats that ate carrots along with their ordinary feed, as well as a second group that had falcarinol added to their feed, were one-third less likely to develop cancerous tumors compared with rats that were not given either, according to the report in the February issue of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
