I like to let you know when the government throws us natural medicine believers a bone — it happens so rarely, after all. But $1.3 million is a pretty big bone. That’s what the National Cancer Institute (NCI) recently awarded a team of researchers from the University of Virginia in order to study just how broccoli achieves its cancer-fighting abilities.

This probably doesn’t seem like it would be worthy of such a grand-scale study, since the general cancer-fighting properties of broccoli are pretty well known. In fact, they’ve even been attributed to specific phytochemicals in broccoli called isothiocynates (see the “What is…” section below for more information on isothiocynate). But, as the article I read so bluntly (and appropriately) put it: “no one knows what these compounds do.”

So for a minute I was refreshed to see the NCI offering funding to researchers on a quest to find out. Then I found it — the catch: The article went on to say that “understanding the mechanism behind the anti-cancer effects may also have implications for both nutra- and pharmaceuticals.”

In other words, they’re hoping to figure out how broccoli’s isothiocynates do their thing so that they can take that information and use it to create a synthetic version that pharmaceutical companies can sell for an enormous profit.

The good news? You don’t have to wait around for the results of this research, let alone for Big Pharma to swoop in. The point is, broccoli does fight cancer, and eating more of it will only help you — regardless of exactly HOW.