Cruciferous vegetables

Broccoli, kale and their relatives contain glucosinolates that convert to sulforaphane, which does impressive things to cancer pathways in cells and rodents. Human trials are small, short and mostly measure biomarkers rather than disease. The cohort evidence for cruciferous intake and cancer risk is weaker and less consistent than the mechanistic story implies — a common pattern worth recognising.

Reviewed 2026-09-20

Official sources

How this list was built

We searched Europe PMC for English-language papers published since 2010 whose title contains “cruciferous” or “broccoli” or “sulforaphane”, kept meta-analyses, systematic reviews, trials and observational studies, because a diet or exposure like this cannot be randomised for long and its outcome evidence lives in cohorts, then ranked them by study design first, then recency and citations. Retracted papers are removed.

Open a paper to read its abstract and ask for an AI brief of what it found.