Eating an antioxidant-packed combo of tomato and broccoli can help fight prostate cancer more effectively than consuming either food on its own, according to a new study from the journal Cancer Research. Researchers fed lab rats the human equivalent of 2.5 cups of cherry tomatoes (or one cup of tomato sauce) and 1.5 cups of broccoli daily, finding that those amounts significantly slowed tumor growth.

To get your fill of those anticancer veggies, read up on the tomato- and broccoli-rich recipes included in cookbooks like The New Enchanted Broccoli Forest by Mollie Katzen, which Sean considers “a must-have for the vegetarian home cook.” For Fanny The Fairy, it’s all about Leith’s Vegetarian Bible, since “vegetables are too good to be just an side dish.” And my favorite veggie cookbook is Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, a wonderfully thick recipe collection that Liz at Pocket Farm dubs “my bible.”

No, polishing up your apple with the use of your t-shirt doesn’t count as properly washing your fruits and veggies. And running them under the faucet for about half a second might not do much good either. To get rid of highly undesirable stuff like pesticides and wax and handling residue, thedelicious insists on using Fit Fruit and Vegetable Wash. Here, she gives us the lowdown on why clean fruits and veggies are “serious business”:

“I am no freaky weird girl-in-a-bubble germaphobe, but I use FIT fruit and vegetable wash on EVERY fruit and vegetable that comes into my house, even if it’s labeled as organic, even if I bought it from the farmers’ market from the hot son of the farmer from whom I’ve been buying fresh figs for five years. It not only dissolves those disgusting waxes and preservatives that the grocery store sprays on (which can trap bacteria and other weird stuff), but it washes away excess dirt and human germs that are everywhere, no matter your source.”

And don’t be skeeved out by the idea of spraying a cleaning product onto something you’re going to eat: Fit uses natural cleansers like purified water, vegetable-derived glycerol, baking soda, and grapefruit oil, all of which rinse away completely before reaching your lips.

Having consumed so much avocado over the last few days - how else to get through those Trader Joe’s four-packs before the stuff turns all brown and bad? - I’m psyched by low-carb blogger Carol Bardelli’s recent discovery that adding fat to veggies may make them more nutritious. According to a Wall Street Journal article highlighted in Carol’s post, the body requires the presence of fat in order to absorb some of the vitamins and anti-cancer compounds found in fruits and veggies. The article points to an Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center study finding that adding avocado to fat-free salsa - which boosted the fat content to about 37 percent of calories - resulted in test subjects absorbing an average of 4.4 times as much lycopene and 2.6 times as much beta carotene.

Inspired by raw food guru Victoria Boutenko, Fran Gets Fit has been experimenting with green smoothies - that is, smoothies made with leafy greens like spinach, kale, and some types of lettuce. May sound slightly strange, but Fran swears by the nutrient-packed concoctions. Here’s a little incentive to whip up your own:

“I made one today just with a few things I had in the fridge, 1 pear, a few chunks of pineapple, some crushed ice and a handful of mixed spinach, watercress and rocket. It was a lovely shade of green and tasted wonderful, sweet but with a hidden tang. I bet a banana would have made it really creamy too.”