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Popeye may have oversimpled the benefits of eating spinach, but maybe only by a little.
The green leafy vegetable has been linked to preserving your vision, lowering your blood pressure, and even, as the sailor himself suggested, improving muscle function. Now, a new study suggests there’s another powerful benefit that could come from incorporating more spinach into your diet—it could protect you from colorectal cancer.
The study, published in the journal Intestinal microbes, found that eating spinach can help prevent tumors from forming in the colon. At least that was the case with the rats. Researchers at Texas A&M University Health Science Center observed rats for 26 weeks, comparing the development of polyps (benign growths that could turn into cancerous tumors at term) in those who ate freeze-dried spinach to those who didn’t. . leafy green.
The researchers found that spinach improved rodent gut health, promoting biodiversity, which played a role in suppressing tumor growth.
RELATED: What Happens To Your Body When You Eat Spinach, According to Science
In an interview with Eat this, not that!, Kathy Siegel, MS, RDN, CDN, and author of The 30 Minute Cookbook for Healthy Eating and Clean Eat Vegetarian Cookbook, noted that the antioxidants in spinach make it a great addition to any diet.
“Previous studies have shown that these protective compounds, along with the vitamin content of spinach, may promote anticancer properties“She said.” Spinach is rich in vitamin K, vitamin A, folic acid, manganese, magnesium, iron, vitamin C, B vitamins, omega-3 fatty acids and dietary fiber.
While this isn’t hard evidence that adding spinach to your diet will prevent you from developing colon cancer (no behavior change can offer that kind of certainty!), At the very least, it is. a promising sign. And adding more spinach to your diet certainly doesn’t hurt, unless you take certain medications like blood thinners that force you to keep your vitamin K intake low.
“Spinach is not a ‘magic’ food. It is likely that if the same research were conducted with other leafy greens, it would yield similar results,” says Mascha Davis MPH, RDN, author of Eat your vitamins. “The key to take out, I think, is to eat your vitamins, and do it in many different forms, with spinach being a great one.”
Other foods that could make the difference in helping prevent this potentially fatal disease include dairy and whole grains, as well as, more surprisingly, red algae.
If colorectal cancer is rampant in your family, or if you think you might be at risk otherwise, be sure to talk to your doctor. According to the CDC, some symptoms of colon cancer include loss of appetite, abdominal pain, bowel movements such as diarrhea, constipation, and other changes in your stool.
Find out more, be sure to eat yogurt and cheese can be good for your heart – here’s why! So, don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter.
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