NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Eat your vegetables. That's the take-home message from a 10-year study of nearly 40,000 Japanese people that found diets heavy in fruits and veggies may ward off stomach cancer.

"Consumption of vegetables and fruit as low as one day per week may serve to protect against gastric cancer," conclude a team of scientists led by Dr. Shoichiro Tsugane of the National Cancer Center Research Institute East in Kashiwa, Japan. They published their findings in a recent issue of the International Journal of Cancer.

Stomach cancer is the number two cancer killer worldwide. While numerous factors--such as smoking, drinking and the ulcer bacterium H. pylori--have all been implicated in raising the risk of gastric malignancies, the exact role of diet has remained unclear. This is because many of the biggest studies looking into the issue have been retrospective, meaning researchers ask people with or without stomach cancers to try to estimate their past dietary intake of various foods.

But Tsugane and his team tried a different, prospective approach. Beginning in 1990, they used periodic questionnaires to keep track of the ongoing dietary habits of 40,000 Japanese men and women. By the year 2000, 404 of those participants had developed some form of stomach cancer.

After adjusting for other risk factors such as age, smoking and drinking, the researchers compared the diets of those who had developed cancer with those who remained cancer-free.

They found that individuals ranking in the top 20% in terms of their weekly vegetable and fruit consumption had an overall 25% lower risk of developing stomach cancer, compared with those in the bottom 20%.

While consumption of all fruits and vegetables seemed to lessen cancer risk, some products of the garden or orchard were healthier than others. For example, individuals who ate "white" vegetables, such as Chinese cabbage or cucumber, at least one day a week had a 52% lower risk of stomach tumors compared with individuals who rarely ate these foods. Slightly less effective were "yellow" vegetables such as carrots or pumpkin--individuals who ate these foods at least one day per week reduced their risk by 36%. Fruit consumption once a week or more caused stomach cancer risk to drop by about 30%.

The study adds strength to the theory that fruits and vegetables--already bursting with heart-healthy antioxidants--may slow or prevent malignancies. "This prospective study suggests that vegetable and fruit intake, even in low amounts, is associated with a lower risk of gastric cancer," the researchers conclude.

SOURCE: International Journal of Cancer;102:39-44.

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