Call it eating for a cause. You can plan your menu in a way that helps knock out the third leading cancer for both men and women: colorectal cancer. Here's how to tune up your meals:

Breakfast: Add sliced bananas. They're good sources of vitamin B-6. People who get the most of this vitamin reduce their risk of colorectal cancer by 20 percent to 30 percent. You need about 4 milligrams a day for this effect, and you get 0.5 mg from a banana. Other B-6 "bomb the colon cancer" sources are corn, eggs and spinach -- and your multivitamin.

Lunch: Toss broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage into your salad. As part of the Brassica family (that's a family of vegetables, not a singing group), these contain compounds called isothiocyanates. They turn on the GSTM1 gene that produces a protein that causes many colorectal cancer cells to commit suicide. Seems to work for breast and prostate cancers, too.

Snack: Crunch on an apple. The fiber in apples -- pectin -- increases levels of butyrate, a fatty acid that slows the production of a cancer-causing substance.

Dinner: Select the salmon. Men who eat fish and shrimp five times a week have a 40 percent lower risk of colorectal cancer. It's possible that fish keep you from eating red meat, a food that dramatically raises colon cancer risk. We recommend salmon: It's packed with vitamin D, a known colon-cancer protector (it has more than 500 IU in 3 ounces; a good start toward the 1,000 IU a day that adults under age 60 need and the 1,200 needed by people over 60).

The YOU Docs, Mehmet Oz and Mike Roizen, are authors of "YOU: The Owner's Manual." Want more? See "The Dr. Oz Show" on TV (check local listings). To submit questions, go to www.RealAge.com.

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