Medical Uses and/or Benefits
Protection against certain cancers. Naturally occurring chemicals (indoles, isothiocyanates,
glucosinolates, dithiolethiones, and phenols) in cabbage, brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauli-
flower, and other cruciferous vegetables appear to reduce the risk of some cancers, perhaps
by preventing the formation of carcinogens in your body or by blocking cancer-causing
substances from reaching or reacting with sensitive body tissues or by inhibiting the trans-
formation of healthy cells to malignant ones.
All cruciferous vegetables contain sulforaphane, a member of a family of chemicals
known as isothiocyanates. In experiments with laboratory rats, sulforaphane appears to
increase the body’s production of phase-2 enzymes, naturally occurring substances that inac-
tivate and help eliminate carcinogens. At Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland,
69 percent of the rats injected with a chemical known to cause mammary cancer developed
tumors vs. only 26 percent of the rats given the carcinogenic chemical plus sulforaphane.
In 1997, Johns Hopkins researchers discovered that broccoli seeds and three-day-old
broccoli sprouts contain a compound converted to sulforaphane when the seed and sprout
cells are crushed. Five grams of three-day-old broccoli sprouts contain as much sulforaphane
as 150 grams of mature broccoli. The sulforaphane levels in other cruciferous vegetables have
not yet been calculated.
Vision protection. In 2004, the Johns Hopkins researchers updated their findings on sulfora-
phane to suggest that it may also protect cells in the eyes from damage due to ultraviolet
light, thus reducing the risk of macular degeneration, the most common cause of age-related
vision loss.
Lower risk of some birth defects. As many as two of every 1,000 babies born in the United
States each year may have cleft palate or a neural tube (spinal cord) defect due to their moth-
ers’ not having gotten adequate amounts of folate during pregnancy. The current RDA for
folate is 180 mcg for a woman and 200 mcg for a man, but the FDA now recommends 400
mcg for a woman who is or may become pregnant. Taking a folate supplement before becom-
ing pregnant and through the first two months of pregnancy reduces the risk of cleft palate;
taking folate through the entire pregnancy reduces the risk of neural tube defects.
Possible lower risk of heart attack. In the spring of 1998, an analysis of data from the records
for more than 80,000 women enrolled in the long-running Nurses’ Health Study at Harvard
School of Public Health/Brigham and Women’s Hospital, in Boston, demonstrated that a diet
providing more than 400 mcg folate and 3 mg vitamin B 6 daily, either from food or supple-
ments, might reduce a woman’s risk of heart attack by almost 50 percent. Although men
were not included in the study, the results were assumed to apply to them as well.
However, data from a meta-analysis published in the Journal of the American Medical
Association in December 2006 called this theory into question. Researchers at Tulane Univer-
sity examined the results of 12 controlled studies in which 16,958 patients with preexisting
cardiovascular disease were given either folic acid supplements or placebos (“look-alike” pills
Cabbage