AICR's report concludes that diets high in red meat and especially processed meat are a convincing cause of colorectal cancer. Grilling any animal product also forms HCAs and PAHs, though the report calls the evidence that these contribute to human cancer limited but suggestive.
Food Consumer
Comments
Busting Cancer Myths: Acidic Foods and Cancer Risks
The American Institute for Cancer Research rebuts the claim that acidic foods promote cancer: the lab findings apply only to isolated cells, the body regulates acid-base balance tightly through the kidneys and lungs, and urine test kits say nothing about body pH.
Cancer
Blowing Out the Fuse: How Our Bodies Stop Cancer Before It Starts
The American Institute for Cancer Research describes how enzymes clear cancer-sparking substances and antioxidants neutralize free radicals, and how repeated exposure can rewrite a cell's DNA instructions so it reproduces uncontrollably. Plant-rich diets help keep those defenses running.
Nutrition
High potassium may help lower blood pressure
Reviewing published studies, Drs. Mark Houston and Karen Harper report that high dietary potassium may lower blood pressure and cut hypertension by more than 10 percent. Americans eat twice the recommended sodium and half the recommended potassium.
Minerals
Zinc Could Saves Lives of Children With Diarrhea
A Cochrane review covering more than 6,000 children found strong evidence that zinc supplementation helps children with diarrhea in developing countries, but only in infants over six months old. Zinc shortened both acute and persistent diarrhea, the lead investigator said.
Autoimmune Diseases
Drinking in Excess Associated with Increased Risk for Metabolic Syndrome
Among 1,529 current drinkers aged 20 to 84 in the 1999-2002 NHANES, those exceeding the Dietary Guidelines or binge drinking faced higher metabolic syndrome risk. Lead author Amy Fan notes that 58% of U.S. drinkers report drinking above the guidelines.
Chemical
Soy Compounds Affect Brain, Reproductive Development
North Carolina State researchers report that phytoestrogens tied to soy-based foods altered the sex-specific organization of the hypothalamus in laboratory rats, bringing early puberty and signs of advanced menopause. Co-author Heather Patisaul says the brain changes cannot be reversed.
Other Diseases
Alcohol binges early in pregnancy increase risk of infant oral clefts
NIEHS researchers found that Norwegian women who averaged five or more drinks per sitting early in pregnancy were more than twice as likely as non-drinkers to have a baby with an oral cleft, and three times as likely if they binged on three or more occasions in the first trimester.
Lifestyle
55 minutes per day needed to sustain weight loss
Following 201 overweight and obese women eating 1,200 to 1,500 calories a day, University of Pittsburgh researchers found that sustaining a 10% weight loss over two years took about 55 minutes of exercise five days a week - well above the 150 minutes a week currently recommended.
Nutrition
Foods high in conjugated linoleic acids can enrich breast milk
Seven nursing mothers ate cookies made with CLA-enriched or regular butter. Across 48 hours, milk from the enriched group carried 46 percent more conjugated linoleic acid, peaking 8 to 28 hours after the cookies, a team led by Athena Moutsioulis reported.
Disease
Fat around the heart may increase risk of heart attacks
Wake Forest researchers reporting in Obesity found fat around the heart may matter more for heart attack risk than BMI or waist size. Drawing on data from 6,800 MESA participants, they looked at whether pericardial fat tracks with calcified plaque. Even a thin person can carry it.
Nutrition
Eating fish may explain very low levels of heart disease in Japan
A University of Pittsburgh study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology compared 868 men aged 40 to 49 and found Japanese men had the least atherosclerosis and twice the omega-3 levels of white or Japanese American men, whose hardening was similar or higher.
Environment
Industry says granite countertops are safe to use
The Marble Institute of America dismissed Rice physicist W.J. Llope's radiation findings as junk science, citing EPA statements that the agency has no reliable data showing countertop granite significantly raises indoor radon, which it attributes mainly to soil gas.
Lifestyle
Important precautionary advice on cell phone use
Ronald Herberman of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute emailed colleagues an advisory on cell phone use, saying a growing body of studies links long-term use to possible harms including cancer, though the evidence remains controversial. France, Germany and India limit exposure.
Food
Turmeric may help prevent type 2 diabetes
Mice fed high doses of dietary curcumin had better blood glucose and glucose and insulin tolerance, and obese mice showed less inflammation in fat tissue and liver, a Columbia team found. They speculate curcumin eases insulin resistance by damping obesity-driven inflammation.
Chemical
Q&A: Trans fat
California's new law phases artificial trans fat out of restaurants by 2010 and out of baked goods by 2011, with fines of $25 to $1,000. Packaged foods appear untouched. Republished Q&As explain what partially hydrogenated oil is and why the industry uses it.
Other Diseases
Low vitamin D linked to higher risk of premature death from all causes
Among 3,258 patients scheduled for coronary angiography and followed 7.7 years, those in the lowest two 25-hydroxyvitamin D quartiles were 2.08 and 1.53 times more likely to die of any cause than those in the highest, with similar figures for cardiovascular death.
Cancer
Pancreatic cancer: What you need to know
Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch, known for his last lecture, died of pancreatic cancer at 47. The disease was projected to be diagnosed in 37,680 Americans and kill 34,290 in 2008. Smoking is the main avoidable risk; a Karolinska study tied sweetened food and drink to higher risk.
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