Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 8, 1995 TAG: 9503080098
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Short
Vitamin companies are hoping to cash in on the nutritional value of vegetables by introducing what could be the next rage in diet supplements: vegetable pills.
No one claims the products will prevent cancer. Such claims could be made only for drugs, which undergo years of human tests.
Leiner Health Products Inc. and Pharmavite, both California vitamin makers, plan to market the pills.
Next month, Leiner will introduce three varieties under its Your Life label: broccoli, spinach and mixed vegetables (carrot, tomato, broccoli and spinach).
The products are tied to recent studies on vegetable components called phytochemicals, after the Greek word for plant.
Phytochemicals protect plants from too much sun. Recent experiments in test tubes and animals have shown they can help curb the growth of some cancer cells.
Leiner claims the pills contain key phytochemicals minus the water and roughage of vegetables.
``The whole thing is just a stab in the dark. That's what it amounts to,'' said Lee Wattenberg, a University of Minnesota professor of laboratory medicine and pathology.
He said many of the lab tests involved much larger quantities of phytochemicals than people typically consume.
Also, nobody knows whether phytochemicals alone curb the cancer causers, or whether cooking affects them.
by CNB