A recent 12-year prospective longitudinal study of 59,000
African American women has shown that those who consumed more
vegetables per day and per week are less likely to develop
estrogen receptor-negative breast cancer than women with low
vegetable intake. The incidence of ER-negative/PR-negative
breast cancer was 43 percent lower among those women who were
consuming at least two (of any kind) vegetables per day compared
with women who ate fewer than four vegetables per week. These
results are important because African American women are more
likely than white women to be diagnosed with estrogen receptor-
negative tumors, which have a poorer prognosis than estrogen
receptor-positive tumors. However, what caught my eye was the
following information. While looking for some more detailed
information within the food frequency data, researchers also
found that higher intake of cruciferous vegetables (Brassicas)
in particular showed a reduced risk of breast cancer overall in
this group of women (all types of breast