Diet and lifestyle: In the cancer fight, eating well is the best revenge

"Flavonols and pancreatic cancer risk: The Multiethnic Cohort Study: Abstract 856
A study of food consumption in 183,518 residents of California and Hawaii has found that a diet high in flavonols might help reduce pancreatic cancer risk, especially in smokers. These compounds are generally ubiquitous in plant-based foods, but are found in highest concentrations in onions, apples, berries, kale and broccoli.
People who ate the largest amounts of flavonols had a 23 percent reduced risk of developing pancreatic cancer compared to those who ate the least, according to a research team led by Laurence Kolonel, M.D., Ph.D., at the Cancer Research Center of Hawaii.
Smokers gained the most benefit. Those who ate the most flavonols reduced their risk of developing pancreatic cancer by 59 percent, compared to those who ate the least, says the study’s lead author, Ute Nöthlings, DrPH, who conducted the study as a postdoctoral fellow in Hawaii and is now a researcher at the German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke.
‘The effect was largest in smokers, presumably because they are at increased pancreatic cancer risk already,' said Nöthlings. Smoking is the only established risk factor for pancreatic cancer, and 'short of stopping tobacco use, it has been difficult to consistently show lifestyle factors that might help protect against this deadly cancer,' she says.
As part of a larger research project known as The Multiethnic Cohort Study, Kolonel and Nöthlings followed the participants for an average of eight years after they filled out a comprehensive food questionnaire. "