Kroger selling brocolli sprouts

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Here's some info,

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http://sproutinformation.com/Press/broccoli_sprouts_fight_ulcers_an.h

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Broccoli Sprouts Fight Ulcers and Cancer

By Rick Weiss

Bad news for those who can't stomach broccoli: New research suggests

that broccoli is especially good for the stomach.

A compound found in broccoli and broccoli sprouts appears to be more

effective than modern antibiotics against the bacteria that cause

peptic ulcers. Moreover, tests in mice suggest the compound offers

formidable protection against stomach cancer -- the second most

common form of cancer worldwide.

If upcoming human tests confirm the findings, a daily snack of tangy

broccoli sprouts could become a medically indicated staple --

especially in Asia, where the ulcer bacteria and stomach cancer

occur in epidemic proportions.

The new work, led by scientists at s Hopkins University, is the

latest in a 10-year series of studies on the cancer-fighting

potential of broccoli.

It started in 1992, when Hopkins pharmacology professor Talalay

and his colleagues showed that sulforaphane -- a substance produced

in the body from a compound in broccoli -- could trigger the

production of phase II enzymes. The enzymes can detoxify cancer-

causing chemicals and are among the most potent anti-cancer

compounds known.

Scientists had known for years that cancer is less common in people

who eat more vegetables, but the broccoli studies were among the

first to point to a particular chemical that might account for much

of that protection.

Subsequent studies found that sulforaphane could prevent the

development of breast and colon cancer, as well as other tumors, in

mice. Then Talalay's team found that the key protective compound in

broccoli (a chemical called glucoraphanin, which the body turns into

sulforaphane) is at least 20 times more concentrated in three-day-

old broccoli sprouts than it is in broccoli.

A single ounce of sprouts has as much glucoraphanin as a pound and a

quarter of cooked broccoli, offering a simpler -- and less

flatulent -- means of consuming potentially healthful quantities of

the protective agent.

Talalay and co-worker Jed W. Fahey founded a company to make the

sprouts for grocery stores. So it was as economic stakeholders

(limited under s Hopkins's conflict-of-interest rules) that they

and their collaborators began testing the effects of sulforaphane on

the bacterium Helicobacter pylori. The microbe, found globally but

especially in Asia, causes ulcers and increases a person's risk of

getting gastric cancer threefold to sixfold.

Fahey said the study arose after he learned that two employees at a

broccoli sprout facility with longstanding ulcers had apparently

been cured after they took up snacking on the sprouts.

Working with researchers from the National Scientific Research

Center in , France, the team found that sulforaphane easily

kills H. pylori, a microbe that is notoriously difficult to

eradicate even with combinations of two or three antibiotics. In

test tube studies, it even killed H. pylori that had burrowed inside

human stomach lining cells, as the microbe often does to escape

attack.

In separate studies involving mice that were dosed with a chemical

known to cause stomach cancer, mice pre-treated with sulforaphane

had 39 percent fewer tumors.

The findings, published in today's online edition of Proceedings of

the National Academy of Sciences, doesn't mean broccoli can cure

ulcers or prevent stomach cancer in people.

" One question is, would you have to eat a ton of broccoli a day to

get enough of this to be effective? " said , a

scientist at the National Cancer Institute.

But Fahey said he is optimistic. " The levels that are effective [in

test tubes] are levels that could be achieved by eating a serving or

so of broccoli sprouts, based on the chemistry we know, " Fahey

said. " This isn't one of those rat studies in which you need 400

times the maximum amount a human could handle. "

Talalay said the group is preparing to start a clinical trial in

Japan to test the sprouts' effectiveness in people infected with H.

pylori. About 80 percent of Japanese adults harbor the microbe in

their stomachs -- one reason that gastric cancer is the No. 1 cancer

killer in Japanese women and No. 2 after lung cancer in Japanese men.

The microbe is similarly common and deadly in many parts of the

world where antibiotics are unavailable or unaffordable, Talalay

said.

" Gratifyingly, this is a dietary approach, " he said, " which is the

only approach feasible or practical if you want to knock down the

incidence of this very serious disease in the parts of the world

where it is most prevalent. "