"cancers" news and stories

A new study gives a good reason for young women to switch to whole grain bread and to generally increase the amount of whole grains in their diets. Conducted at the University of Leeds, the study showed that women who ate at least 30 grams of fiber each day cut their breast cancer risk by half.

The average fiber intake in the UK is 12 grams per day for adults and 15 g per day in the US. Since the results of the study suggest that benefits will not occur when women eat less than 20g per day, it is worth noting that there are a couple of easy ways to eat more fiber. A medium apple, for example, has 4g of fiber. An artichoke, cooked, has 4.5 grams. Beans vary in their fiber content, but tend to have around 16gper cup. 1/2 cup of corn has 5g. There are many other vegetables and fruits that provide low calorie ways to add fiber to the diet, as well.

The benefits of eating more fiber could be overridden by other factors, including weight, but a generally healthy lifestyle that includes the recommended amount of fiber should decrease the risk enough to make dietary changes worth the effort for young women.

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The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published a report last month that suggested that people who eat a significant amounts of onions and garlic may have a lower risk of some types of cancers. The report analyzed eight studies that were based in Italy and Switzerland and found that the risks for mouth, kidney, colon, ovarian and throat cancers were much lower for adults who ate plenty of these two veggies. Benefits were generally attributed to those who ate seven or more servings of onions per week, with numbers suggesting that their cancer risks were less than half of the risk for those who rarely or never ate either vegetable. Some scientists have found that the sulfur compounds in garlic and the antioxidant flavonoids in onions seem to inhibit the growth of tumors. The results also support previous research done in China that show the same trend.

All this being said, one of the researchers behind a Italy study says that it is still possible that those who eat onion and garlic-heavy diets may just have healthier diets and lifestyle habits in general, and just about everyone involved still recommends maintaining a vegetable-heavy diet.

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If you want to believe the most recent food-causing-cancer study, you'll have to cross another thing off the list of foods that we aren't supposed to eat. A Swedish study has just linked sugar consumption to an increased risk of pancreatic cancer. The study followed almost 80,000 people aged 45-83 for about 7 years and noted that those who added five or more servings of sugar to their food were "69 percent more likely to develop pancreatic cancer than those who never added sugar to their food or drink." Drinking multiple soft drinks and eating sweetened or stewed fruit increased the risk, too.

But like the study that linked bread to cancer, this is far from conclusive. The study found no evidence of increased risk from eating "sweets, marmalade, or jams," all of which are typically high in sugar. And other studies have linked diabetes and obesity to an increased risk on pancreatic cancer, both of which are not necessarily only linked to the consumption of sugary drinks. There was no mention of what the difference might be between the quality of sugar found in stewed fruit versus that found in jam.

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