The benefits of fruits and vegetables in staving off cancer exist, but they're not as strong as earlier believed, a new study reports.

Eating an extra 200 grams a day of fruits and vegetables (about two servings) resulted in only a 3 percent reduction of cancer risk, which was described as "very weak," according to the study available online in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.


The World Health Organization, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Cancer Society all promote people to maintain a healthy lifestyle and eat five servings of produce a day for cancer defensive benefits.
Scientists think fruits and vegetables have anti-cancer compounds, affecting enzymes, immune organism and hormone levels.

Researchers raised the vision that people who ate more fruits and vegetables could have lower cancer risks because they had generally healthier lifestyles, "such as lower intake of alcohol, never smoking, short duration of tobacco, and advanced level of physical activity." These could've been factors rather than just fruit and vegetable ingestion.

Previous studies have touted the benefits of produce, with result of 20 to 30 percent reduced cancer rates. The latest finding from the European study was low in contrast."Diet is a difficult pattern and lifestyle," Boffetta said. "Cancer is complex disease. It's suspect that one thing will explain the other."

The study does not contradict existing American Cancer Society guidelines about eating five servings a day to diminish cancer risk, said Dr. Michael Thun, the organization's vice president emeritus of epidemiology. It reaffirmed accessible notions that higher intake lowered cancer risk, he said.

"In my view, there is a good remains of evidence that fruit and vegetables do matter for cancer -- it certainly matters for heart disease," Thun said. "It's not as strong as early studies suggested."

Decades of study have shown that eating processed red meat increases risk of cancers in the digestive tract and that obesity is associated with colorectal and breast cancer. But "the narrative on vegetables and fruits has been harder to nail down," Thun said.She pointed out eating fruits and vegetables has benefits further than the cancer realm.

"It does facilitate with lowering weight and blood pressure, lowering diabetes risk or lowering blood sugar. Those are all health profit that increase lifespan significantly."They also offer soluble and insoluble fiber, minerals, high nutrients and low calories, she added.