Apparently drinking a daily juice made from broccoli sprouts can detox your body of airborne pollutants. So says a paper published earlier this month in the journal Cancer Prevention Research and brought to our attention by the article in the Huffington Post.
So how can broccoli juice do this? Well, it’s all down to our friend sulforaphane that we have reported on a number of times before. According to the authors, sulforaphane can induce detoxification enzymes and the anti-carcinogen properties have been demonstrated in animal models. The removed air pollutants can be measured in the urine.
267 participants took part in the study, the sulforaphane drink was made by extracting glucoraphanin (the precursor of sulforaphane) from broccoli sprouts, boiling it and then converting it using an enzyme extracted from radish, as the enzyme present in the broccoli sprouts is denatured by the boiling.
It was found that an increased amount of glutathione-derived conjugates of air pollutants benzene and acrolein were detected after a short period of time in the group taking the supplent compared to the placebo group. This level of detoxification did not seem to decrease over the 12 week period.
Unfortunately, the mode of delivery may need some work, “unacceptable taste and mild stomach discomfort” were common complaints suggesting that perhaps pineapple and lime juice are not the best way to disguise the rather strong taste of cruciferous vegetables.
Have they thought about just eating the sprouts themselves? I could imagine they would be good in an egg sandwich…
The paper was published in the journal Cancer Prevention Research.
Click here to read the article on the Huffington Post website.