The humble broad bean might help to prevent bowel cancer - the second most common cause of deaths from cancer in the UK, scientists have claimed. Researchers from Hammersmith Hospital and the Imperial College of Science, Technology, and Medicine, London, assessed the effects of dietary lectins on the behaviour of cancer cells in the colon.
Lectins are proteins found in many plant foods, including broad beans.
They attach themselves to carbohydrate molecules, which are then absorbed by the cells lining the bowel during digestion. The findings, published in the medical journal Gut, showed that broad bean and mushroom lectins were able to halt or even reverse the cancer process. A normal healthy cell is said to be well differentiated, meaning that its characteristic features and structures are intact, enabling it to function properly. Loss of differentiation is a hallmark of cancer cells. Cancer halted The broad bean and mushroom lectins were able to increase the differentiation of cancer cells, indicating that the cancer process was either being halted or reversed.