That’s according to a new study by Texas AgriLife Research food scientists, who examined the five varieties most common in the U.S.: Kent, Francine, Ataulfo, Tommy/Atkins and Haden.

Though the mango is an ancient fruit heavily consumed in many parts of the world, little has been known about its health aspects. The National Mango Board commissioned a variety of studies with several U.S. researchers to help determine its nutritional value.

“If you look at what people currently perceive as a superfood, people think of high antioxidant capacity, and mango is not quite there,” said Dr. Susanne Talcott, who with her husband, Dr. Steve Talcott, conducted the study on cancer cells. “In comparison with antioxidants in blueberry, acai and pomegranate, it’s not even close.”

But the team checked mango against cancer cells anyway, and found it prevented or stopped cancer growth in certain breast and colon cell lines, Susanne Talcott noted.

“It has about four to five times less antioxidant capacity than an average wine grape, and it still holds up fairly well in anticancer activity. If you look at it from the physiological and nutritional standpoint, taking everything together, it would be a high-ranking super food,” she said. “It would be good to include mangoes as part of the regular diet.”

The Talcotts tested mango polyphenol extracts in vitro on colon, breast, lung, leukemia and prostate cancers. Polyphenols are natural substances in plants and are associated with a variety of compounds known to promote good health.

Mango showed some impact on lung, leukemia and prostate cancers but was most effective on the most common breast and colon cancers.

“What we found is that not all cell lines are sensitive to the same extent to an anticancer agent,” she said. “But the breast and colon cancer lines underwent apotosis, or programmed cell death. Additionally, we found that when we tested normal colon cells side by side with the colon cancer cells, that the mango polyphenolics did not harm the normal cells.”

The duo did further tests on the colon cancer lines because a mango contains both small molecules that are readily absorbed and larger molecules that would not be absorbed and thus remain present in a colon.

“We found the normal cells weren’t killed, so mango is not expected to be damaging in the body,” she said. “That is a general observation for any natural agent, that they target cancer cells and leave the healthy cells alone, in reasonable concentrations at least.”

The Talcotts evaluated polyphenolics, and more specifically gallotannins as being the class of bioactive compounds (responsible for preventing or stopping cancer cells). Tannins are polyphenols that are often bitter or drying and found in such common foods as grape seed, wine and tea.

The study found that the cell cycle, which is the division cells go through, was interrupted. This is crucial information, Suzanne Talcott said, because it indicates a possible mechanism for how the cancer cells are prevented or stopped.

“For cells that may be on the verge of mutating or being damaged, mango polyphenolics prevent this kind of damage,” she said.

The Talcotts hope to do a small clinical trial with individuals who have increased inflamation in their intestines with a higher risk for cancer.

“From there, if there is any proven efficacy, then we would do a larger trial to see if there is any clinical relevance,” she said.

According to the National Mango Board, based in Winter Park, Fla., most mangoes consumed in the U.S. are produced in Mexico, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, Guatemala and Haiti. Mangoes are native to southeast Asia and India and are produced in tropical climates. They were introduced to the U.S. in the late 1800s, and a few commercial acres still exist in California and Florida.

Source: Kathleen Phillips
Texas A&M AgriLife Communications

In previous studies, excess weight has been linked with increased risk of postmenopausal breast cancer. Scientists have speculated that in postmenopausal women, estrogen produced in adipose tissue, or body fat, may promote breast cell proliferation. Relatively few studies have looked specifically at increase in BMI and its timing in relation to postmenopausal breast cancer risk, which this study investigated.

The researchers analyzed information from 72,007 women in the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial cohort, who were 55 to 74 years old at study entry. The analysis included 3,677 cases of postmenopausal breast cancer, which makes this one of the larger studies of its kind, according to the researchers.

The researchers observed the strongest associations among women who had never used menopausal hormone therapy; results were shown only for this group of women.

“Compared with women who maintained approximately the same BMI, those who had an increase of 5 kg/m2 or more between age 20 and study entry had a nearly twofold increased risk of breast cancer,” said Laura Sue, M.P.H., a cancer research fellow at the National Cancer Institute (NCI).

Results showed that nearly 57 percent of the study population’s BMI increased 5 kg/m2 or more between age 20 and study entry. A BMI increase of 5 kg/m2 is equivalent to a woman of average height, 5′4″, gaining approximately 30 pounds.

Women who reported a BMI increase of 5 kg/m2 or more between age 20 and 50 were at an 88 percent increased risk of developing postmenopausal breast cancer, compared with women who reported a stable BMI. For women who reported a BMI increase of 5 kg/m2 or more between age 50 and study entry, risk increased 56 percent, compared with women who maintained BMI. BMI gain both before and after age 50 independently contribute to increased risk of postmenopausal breast cancer.

Source: American Association for Cancer Research (AACR)

For decades, scientists have had inklings that a diet that derives about 40 percent of its calories from healthy fat and about half from complex carbohydrates such as whole grains, fruit and vegetables, combined with daily exercise, could promote health and reduce premature death.

But this is the first large trial of healthy men and women to demonstrate a significant reduction in death rates for heart disease, cancer and all other causes of mortality for those who follow a Mediterranean diet and are physically active.

‘In the past, when we talked about the Mediterranean diet, we usually talked about cardiovascular benefits,’ Frank Hu, associate professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, said yesterday. ‘This is talking about primary prevention. The better the Mediterranean diet, the lower the cardiovascular disease and cancer mortality. . . . That is very intriguing.’

The results suggest a middle course between the often confusing diet extremes, from the very low-carbohydrate, high-fat Atkins approach to the higher carbohydrate, low-fat U.S. dietary guidelines.

The findings also point to ‘diet as being very important in more ways than we had anticipated,’ said Walter Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, who advocates boosting ‘healthy fat’ in the American diet as well as adding more grains, fruit, vegetables and fish. (So-called healthy fats are found in such foods as olive oil, avocados, nuts, and fish.)

The U.S government’s recommendation of consuming only 30 percent total fat may ‘not be optimal for many people,’ Willett said. But the study also ‘emphasizes that for overall good health, eating porterhouse steak, butter and lard is not the way to go.’

What the results also underscore is the importance of the overall Mediterranean diet approach, rather than any one food type. In an article that accompanies the results, which are published in today’s New England Journal of Medicine, Hu suggests that this could be explained in two ways: either the effects of any one nutrient are too small to detect, or there may be synergistic effects of the Mediterranean diet that are important.

‘That’s interesting,’ Willett said, ‘because any one piece of the Mediterranean diet on its own was not so impressive. It’s the whole package — the fruit and vegetables, the nuts . . . all those things that seem to contribute.’

The study involved 22,043 adults, ages 20 to 86, who live in Greece; people with diabetes and known heart disease were excluded.

Upon entering the study, participants were interviewed in depth about their daily diets and exercise habits. The researchers assigned points for each component of diet and lifestyle.

For example, eating vegetables, legumes and beans, fruit, nuts, whole grains (in cereal, bread and pasta) and fish raised the scores. So did consuming more monounsaturated fats, such as olive oil, rather than saturated fats, such as butter or cream.

Participants also received a point for drinking moderate amounts of alcohol — about a glass of wine a day for women; two glasses for men — but got a zero if they imbibed more or less than that.

Regularly eating meat, poultry, sweets and dairy products, which in Greece are generally high in saturated fat, added no points and resulted in a lower overall diet score.

The research team, which was led by Antonia Trichopoulou of the University of Athens Medical School and Dimitrios Trichopoulos of the Harvard School of Public Health, then tracked participants for an average of nearly four years.

They also took into account age, sex, years of education, smoking status, body mass index (to gauge overweight and obesity) and waist-to-hip ratios, which help determine risk for heart disease and diabetes.

The study found that the higher the healthy diet score, the lower the risk of death. For every two-point rise — achieved, for example, by eating a lot of vegetables and consuming beans and nuts daily — the risk of death dropped by 25 percent, the study found.

‘This says you can get tremendous benefit from simply moving away from unhealthy foods, and there are multiple ways that you can achieve this,’ Hu said.

Daily physical activity also played a critical role in reducing mortality from heart disease and cancer, the study found. People who engaged in at least an hour a day of very vigorous activity, either on the job or at leisure, had a 28 percent reduced risk of mortality compared with their more sedentary counterparts.

The effects of physical activity ‘cannot be overemphasized,’ Hu said.

The findings echo the results of smaller studies, including the Lyon Diet Heart Study in France, that have hinted at health benefits of the Mediterranean lifestyle.

In the Lyon trial, researchers randomly assigned 605 people diagnosed with heart disease to either follow a Mediterranean-style diet or the American Heart Association diet, which has about 30 percent of calories from fat, including 10 or less from saturated fat.

In this study, people assigned to the Mediterranean group were encouraged to eat more fruit, vegetables and fish, to cut back on red meat and to use olive oil instead of butter and cream.

The study found that the Mediterranean diet group suffered 73 percent fewer heart attacks or other heart-related problems and had 70 percent fewer deaths than those on the heart association diet.