Parsley is full of flavonoids which is a powerful chemical that aids in the prevention of cancer and can also fight heart disease. Eating parsley may reduce your risk of hormone related breast and prostate cancers. Sometimes cooking vegetables can take out important vitamin c which combats cancer so by sprinkling raw parsley of foods right before you eat them will give you a natural vitamin c boost and also give you antioxidants and flavonoids.I love couscous as a side dish or as a chilled salad. Adding parsley, alfalfa sprouts, and minced sun dried tomatoes that have been soaked in olive oil is my favorite salad of all. Sun dried tomatoes pack a great tomato punch to this recipe giving you more vitamins and nutrients.
Vicki's Parsley, Sprout , and Tomato Couscous
1 cup couscous
2 1/2 cups vegetable broth
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley
1/2 cup alfalfa sprouts
1/2 cup chopped sun dried tomatoes (that have been soaked in olive oil)
salt and pepper to taste
Bring broth and olive oil to a boil and pour in couscous. Cover and reduce heat and let sit for 15 minutes. Remove couscous from pan into a large mixing bowl and fluff with fork. Let chill in refrigerator for an hour. Stir in parsley, alfalfa sprouts, and sun dried tomatoes. Salt and pepper to taste. This dish is great and will keep in the refrigerator for up to three days.
1. The information at http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/Data/Flav/flav.pdf may be of interest. The flavonoid content of various foods is listed.
In particular look at the extremely high level of the flavone apigenin in parsley. Few foods on the list contain apigenin at all. But, dried parsley is reported as having 13506.2 mg/100 grams.
Apigenin has many beneficial effects which a PubMed or Google search can tell you. Following is just one of many such reports:
Neoplasia. 2006 Nov;8(11):896-904
Apigenin suppresses cancer cell growth through ERbeta.
Mak P, Leung YK, Tang WY, Harwood C, Ho SM.
Department of Surgery, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA 01605, USA.
Two flavonoids, genistein and apigenin, have been implicated as chemopreventive agents against prostate and breast cancers. However, the mechanisms behind their respective cancer-protective effects may vary significantly. The goal of this study was to determine whether the antiproliferative action of these flavonoids on prostate (DU-145) and breast (MDA-MB-231) cancer cells expressing only estrogen receptor (ER) beta is mediated by this ER subtype. It was found that both genistein and apigenin, although not 17beta-estradiol, exhibited antiproliferative effects and proapoptotic activities through caspase-3 activation in these two cell lines. In yeast transcription assays, both flavonoids displayed high specificity toward ERbeta transactivation, particularly at lower concentrations. However, in mammalian assay, apigenin was found to be more ERbeta-selective than genistein, which has equal potency in inducing transactivation through ERalpha and ERbeta. Small interfering RNA-mediated downregulation of ERbeta abrogated the antiproliferative effect of apigenin in both cancer cells but did not reverse that of genistein. Our data unveil, for the first time, that the anticancer action of apigenin is mediated, in part, by ERbeta. The differential use of ERalpha and ERbeta signaling for transaction between genistein and apigenin demonstrates the complexity of phytoestrogen action in the context of their anticancer properties.
PMID: 17132221
Nerissa Belcher
Posted at 5:31AM on May 16th 2007 by Nerissa Belcher