Cornell researcher show food is better than pills

This one should come as no suprise to regular readers of this blog.

From WEB MD:

"Antioxidants in foods work together and their combined effect is greatest, they explain."No single antioxidant can replace the combination of natural phytochemicals in fruits and vegetables in achieving ultimate health benefits," write the researchers.

"The pure compounds either lose their bioactivities in isolation or may not behave the same way as the compound in complex whole foods.

"Our findings suggest that consumers may gain more significant health benefits from including whole foods in their balanced diet than from more expensive dietary supplements, which do not contain the same array of balanced, complex components."

The study looked at rats and the consumption of apples (Red Delicious). The finding? Apples helped fight cancer!

Again from Web MD:

The extracts "effectively inhibited" breast cancer in rats, write food science professor Rui Hai Liu, PhD, MD, MS, and colleagues. "Thus, consumption of apples may be an effective strategy for cancer protection," says their study.

The study will appear in the March 23 edition of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.