Eating your fruits and vegetables is one of the easiest ways to care for your health. But new research suggests we might need to pay a little more attention to how these nutritional staples are grown.
Scientists from the University of Southern California presented research at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research that showed young adults who eat healthier than the general population might be at a higher risk of developing non-smoking lung cancer. But before you triumphantly purge your fridge of leafy greens, keep listening.
Researchers believe this link is due to the pesticides that commercially grown vegetables are treated with, a theory supported by the high rates of cancer that occur among agricultural employees who are frequently exposed to pesticides.
The team found that young women who did not smoke were diagnosed with lung cancer more often than men in the same group. The women also consumed more fruits and vegetables, eating about one extra serving of leafy greens and legumes a day than the average adult in America.
Though rates of smoking across the country have declined since the ’60s, nonsmokers under the age of 50, often women, are increasingly diagnosed with lung cancer. The subtype of this nonsmoking lung cancer is biologically different from the kind of lung cancer you get from smoking.
Moving forward, researchers plan to measure pesticide levels in participant urine to get a better idea of which ones are associated with lung cancer. And, though it’s still a good idea to eat your vegetables, organic options might be worth exploring until we know more.