If you MUST smoke, eat veggies and drink tea

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OK, you know we’re not telling you that smoking is all right. It isn’t. Any time a doctor or medical researcher - or your child or your spouse, for that matter - even hears a whisper alluding to ‘safe smoking techniques,’ they go berserk. ‘There is no safe smoking,’ they shout in unison. ‘Just quit. Quit. Quit.’

Even the lead researcher on a new study in the journal Cancer, Dr. Zuo-Feng Zhang of UCLA’s Jonsson Cancer Center, who found that some fruits and vegetables, as well as green and black tea, seem to offer some protection against lung cancer to smokers, is quick to add the usual caveat. ‘Quitting smoking is the best course of action,’ he says in a press release.

But in a study of 558 people with lung cancer and 837 people who did not have lung cancer, researchers found that plant components called flavonoids seemed to protect smokers from lung cancer. It was a look-back study, analyzing the subjects’ dietary history. The components that appeared to offer the most protection included catechin, found in strawberries and green and black tea; kaempferol, found in apples and Brussels sprouts; and quercetin, found in beans, onions and apples.

So should smokers load the grocery cart with apples, strawberries and teas? It would be better if they quit smoking, according to Zhang. Yeah, yeah, we know. ‘However,’ he says, ‘it’s not a bad idea for everyone to eat more fruits and vegetables and drink more tea.’

The next step is to study the effect of flavonoids on cell lines and animals in the lab to figure out how they protect against lung cancer. The components, he says, block the formation of blood vessels that feed tumors and stop cancer cells from growing. Next, he wants to study which plant foods protect best, and the daily amounts that offer the best protection.

Having said all that, it’s time to say it again. Smoking is bad. Just quit.

-Susan Brink