Plants naturally synthesize aspirin because it has a protective effect for them against a number of diseases. Intensive farming however tends have the effect of lowering or reducing these naturally occurring aspirin levels. Could it be that simply by replacing the aspirin that we would normally have received from naturally grown plant foods we boost our own defenses against diseases such as cancer, defenses which should have been there in the first place. Whatever the mechanism is, the UK study certainly appears to give a very convincing result.
