A Little Bitter, A Lot Better
Enhanced veggies may save lives

By Becky Beyers


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That problem can be addressed. For example, harvesting cabbage later in the fall means it has more sugar and tastes less bitter, Fritz says. “There may be methods to increase the concentration of one, or a few targeted compounds and keep the others constant such that increasing bitterness is prevented,” he says.

The current research continues work that started with the Center for Plants and Human Health, an interdisciplinary research effort started in the early part of this decade that included scientists from a range of disciplines. Fritz and others working on growing the enhanced vegetables now are collaborating with scientists from the university’s Cancer Center, the Mayo Clinic and the Hormel Institute, as well as colleagues in other departments and colleges.

“It’s established beyond a shadow of a doubt” that cruciferous vegetables have cancer-preventing agents, says Steve Hecht, program leader for the Carcinogenesis and Chemoprevention Research Program at the Cancer Center. He began collaborating with CFANS scientists through the Center for Plants and Human Health. Developing vegetables with extra cancer-fighting properties is extremely important to the Cancer Center’s efforts, he says, “because we can’t do the sorts of things that people in CFANS who know about plants can do.”

The University of Minnesota is uniquely positioned for these kinds of collaborations, Fritz and Hecht say, because few other major universities have both a strong medical school and a strong agricultural college.

Practical research like growing enhanced vegetables has the potential to attract regional and federal funding because of the public’s interest in cancer prevention, Fritz says. “We hope there’s an opportunity for funding because of the translational research we do. The ability to take the basic scientific knowledge and test it on a larger scale, has the potential to make a real impact.”

Still, many consumers, even though they understand the benefits of eating healthy food, simply don’t eat enough cruciferous vegetables. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated last year that fewer than half of Americans eat the recommended amount of fruits and vegetables each day.

Some of the problem may be cultural, says Sabrina Peterson, an assistant professor in the Department of Food Science and Nutrition who has studied how vegetables in the carrot family help prevent cancer. In other cultures, social norms dictate that people eat lots of vegetables, regardless of their bitter taste. That isn’t the case here. Researchers from a broad range of disciplines may have to work together to figure out how to counteract Americans’ bad eating habits, she says.

For the food industry, the success of a super-vegetable will depend on consumers’ response, says Jean Kinsey, co-director of the Food Industry Center and a professor in the Department of Applied Economics. “If these vegetables taste good and they’re in the form we expect, people will buy them. And if consumers want them, the industry will respond.” She expects that when super-vegetables become available at the supermarket, they’ll be a niche product, along the lines of organics. “It’s kind of the same thing in that consumers who are interested will be really interested,” and willing to pay a premium price for enhanced vegetables, she says.

Fritz also expects that someday super-vegetables will be on the market alongside “traditional” vegetables and that enhancements could be made to a variety of vegetables, not just one. Chinese cabbage, for example, has different primary glucosinolates than traditional cabbage.

How will the researchers know when they’ve made a big breakthrough? “The development of a production system that produces vegetables with enhanced health benefits on a consistent basis would be one of our first big steps,” Fritz says.

“We’re just beginning the journey in this new frontier.”