{"id":2165,"date":"2014-06-19T15:19:02","date_gmt":"2014-06-19T05:19:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/?p=2165"},"modified":"2014-06-19T15:19:02","modified_gmt":"2014-06-19T05:19:02","slug":"on-how-good-broccoli-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/?p=2165","title":{"rendered":"On how good broccoli is"},"content":{"rendered":"

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http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/health\/archive\/2014\/06\/the-only-reason-anyone-would-eat-broccoli\/372899\/<\/p>\n

Broccoli Loves Us<\/h1>\n
New cancer-prevention research says that consuming broccoli sprouts makes people excrete benzene in their urine, mitigating effects of breathing polluted air.<\/div>\n
JAMES HAMBLIN<\/a><\/span>
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Nick Saltmarch\/Flickr<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

What are you doing with the benzene you\u00a0inhale<\/a>? Just absorbing it, stocking up on\u00a0sleepiness, dizziness, anemia<\/a>, possibly\u00a0leukemia<\/a>? Or are you taking control and expunging it in your urine?<\/p>\n

This week in the journal\u00a0Cancer Prevention Research<\/em>, scientists from Johns Hopkins and China’s Qidong Liver Cancer Institute\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0that daily consumption of a half-cup of “broccoli-sprout beverage”\u2014a tea made with broccoli sprouts\u2014produced rapid, sustained, high-level excretion of benzene in research subjects’ urine. Their conclusion, building on prior research, is that broccoli helps the human body break down benzene and excrete its byproducts. As benzene is a known human\u00a0carcinogen<\/a>\u00a0commonly found in polluted air in both urban and rural areas, voiding it is an unmitigated virtue.<\/p>\n

The broccoli-sprout beverage also increased the levels of the lung irritant acrolein, another common air pollutant, in the subjects’ urine.<\/p>\n