Please Your Taste Buds, Protect Your Health

Next time you hit the grocery store, buy some rosemary and capers. Regularly punching up the flavor of your food with these two seasonings not only will make tonight's chicken dish company-worthy but also could boost your cancer defenses.

What capers do: Capers -- the tiny, green, pickled buds that are a staple of Mediterranean cooking -- improve your body's ability to absorb vitamin E (which is found in capers themselves, as well as in almonds, avocados, and other foods). That's important, because E's not all that easy to get, yet it helps put a damper on some cancer-causing processes and may aid DNA repair, too.
How to get more of them: Use capers to add zing to fish, chicken, salads, and pasta dishes. Just don't go overboard if you're sensitive to salt. Like all pickled foods, they pack quite a sodium hit: There's more in a tablespoon of capers than there is in an ounce of potato chips. But not only are you unlikely to eat a tablespoonful, but also capers have redeeming qualities that chips never will!

What rosemary does: In the lab, rosemary extract gives both breast cancer and leukemia cells a real fight, preventing them from proliferating -- that means making more of themselves, in doc-speak. If this proves out in human studies, it will be great news about an herb we already know does delicious things for food.
How to get more of it: Stick a fresh sprig in lemonade or a cup of hot tea; add it to tossed salads or steamed veggies. Or -- maybe smartest -- when you're grilling, use it to marinate food for at least 15 minutes. Marinating (try a mix of olive oil, fresh or dried rosemary, and soy sauce) helps block potential cancer-causing agents that can form during grilling.