Cancer prevention news flash: Recent studies suggest that making a few easy changes to your diet—eating more of some foods, less of others—may bolster your defenses against some malignancies.

Eat More:
Beans
Among 3,409 men and women studied at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, those who ate the most beans, rich in plant estrogens, were 46% less likely to get lung cancer.

Yellow, orange, and dark green leafy veggies
People who ate more than five daily servings of these vegetables had half the pancreatic cancer risk of those who ate two or fewer, in a University of California, San Francisco, study of 2,227 men and women. Suspected protectors: fiber, folate, and vitamins E and C.

Eat Less:
Grilled meat
Two carcinogens—heterocyclic amines and benzopyrene—form in meat under high temps. In a University of Minnesota study of 867 adults, those who consumed the highest amount of these chemicals (based on how often they ate grilled meat) had up to 2.4 times the risk of pancreatic cancer as those who ate the least.

Watch your weight.
Obesity may explain the 0.5% yearly rise in breast cancer cases in women older than age 49, reports the American Cancer Society. Postmenopausal women usually have less circulating estrogen, which should lower their cancer risk. But because fat cells release estrogen, overweight women over 50 may lose their advantage.

Sneak in the good stuff.
Get more cancer-fighting produce: Add orange slices to green salads, use cauliflower in mashed potatoes, stir beans into soups, and snip fresh spinach into pasta dishes.