The Facts on Food and Cancer – Part 2
January 7th, 2010
Official cancer prevention campaigns have tended to shy away from advice about nutrition, preferring to focus on personal control of what enters the lungs and is absorbed through the skin. But the self-help anti-cancer strategy is entering a new age. A steady stream of studies, providing compelling evidence linking diet with various types of cancer, has convinced Australia’s state cancer councils that it is time to act. They have issued general advice on nutrition, summed up in the term the ‘Prudent Diet’. This advice is consistent with the dietary recommendations of the National Heart Foundation and with the national dietary guidelines of Federal Health authorities in Australia, Britain, Canada and the United States.
The Prudent Diet, is no ‘fad’ diet based on intuition about possible nutritional influences on cancer risk. Nor will it leave a feeling of perpetual hunger, the outcome of so many dietary regimes. By reducing the emphasis on fats and accentuating complex carbohydrates and fibre-rich fare, we can enjoy delicious foods that have fallen into disrepute in recent years (such as steamed potatoes, bananas and crusty grain breads) while simultaneously minimising cancer-related health risks.
Researchers have suspected for some time that diet influences the incidence of some common cancers. But it is only in recent years, with data from long-term studies of disease trends among population groups, that firm conclusions have supplanted suspicions. The researchers who conduct such studies are known as epidemiologists and, although still hazy about some aspects of the diet-cancer connection, their advice is firming up year by year. Their findings indicate that some components of the foods we eat actually promote cancer risk (a fat-rich diet heightens the risk of breast and bowel cancer, for example), while other constituents help protect against cancer (the fibre, vitamins and minerals in fruits, vegetables and grains, for instance, reduce the risk of cancers at most sites).
Despite the strong circumstantial, population-related evidence of the role of diet in various cancers, supported by laboratory findings, scientists still have some way to go before they can define precisely the relationships between specific aspects of diet and specific disease outcomes.
Nevertheless health authorities recognise there is now sufficient evidence to warrant changes in food selection, preparation and handling so that the cancer risk of all Australians will be reduced.
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