Super broccoli on the shelves to protect from heart disease

By Dr. Ananya Mandal, MDOct 27 2011

British scientists unveiled a new breed of broccoli that experts say packs heavy on nutritional values. The new broccoli was specially grown to contain two to three times the normal amount of glucoraphanin, a nutrient believed to help ward off heart disease. Glucoraphanin breaks fat down in the body, preventing it from clogging the arteries.

“Vegetables are a medicine cabinet already…When you eat this broccoli ... you get a reduction in cholesterol in your bloodstream,” said Richard Mithen, who led the team of scientists at the Institute for Food Research in Norwich, England, that developed the broccoli.

To create the vegetable, sold as “super broccoli,” Mithen and colleagues cross-bred a traditional British broccoli with a wild, bitter Sicilian variety that has no flowery head, and a big dose of glucoraphanin. After 14 years, the enhanced hybrid was produced, which has been granted a patent by European authorities. No genetic modification was used.

“There's a lot of circumstantial evidence that points to (glucoraphanin and related compounds) as the most important preventive agents for (heart attacks) and certain cancers, so it's a reasonable thing to do,” said Lars Ove Dragsted, a professor in the department of human nutrition at the University of Copenhagen. He previously sat on panels at the International Agency for Research on Cancer examining the link between vegetables and cancer. Dragsted said glucoraphanin is a mildly toxic compound used by plants to fight insects. In humans, glucoraphanin may stimulate human bodies' natural chemical defenses, potentially making the body stronger at removing dangerous compounds.

“Eating this new broccoli is not going to counteract your bad habits,” said Glenys Jones, a nutritionist at Britain's Medical Research Council. She doubted whether adding the nutrients in broccoli to more popular foods would work to improve people's overall health. “If you added this to a burger, people might think it's then a healthy food and eat more burgers, whereas this is not something they should be eating more of,” Jones said.

It’s been on sale as Beneforte in select stores in California and Texas for the last year. It will be rolled out nationwide this fall. It is said to taste slightly sweeter than the usual variety due to less sulphur content.

The super vegetable is part of an increasing tendency among producers to inject extra nutrients into foods, ranging from calcium-enriched orange juice to fortified sugary cereals and milk with added omega 3 fatty acids.