A diet that includes apples—and especially the peel—red grapes, turmeric and green tea will give the body all the chemicals that have been proven to have cancer-fighting qualities.
The chemicals can shrink prostate cancer tumours, but they are likely to be effective against other cancers as well, say researchers from the University of Texas at Austin.
Instead of looking at the chemicals in isolation, the researchers wanted to see just how effective they were in combination—and so eventually came up with the diet.
The chemicals work together to help reverse inflammation, which is known to play a key role in the growth of cancer cells. Inflammation—brought about by chronic infections, auto-immune disease and even obesity—damages healthy cells, and makes them more susceptible to cancer.
In all, the researchers tested 142 different compounds on human cell lines in the laboratory until they came up with their winning combination, which includes ursolic acid, a waxy chemical found in apple peels and rosemary; curcumin, the bright yellow plant compound in turmeric, and resveratrol, which is in berries and red grapes.
By combining the chemicals, the researchers discovered that they stop cancer cells from absorbing glutamine, an amino acid that helps them grow and spread.