Cancer

This morning I polished off a few rashers of bacon. My risk of stomach cancer increased. However, I followed it with a cup of coffee which probably lowered my risk of liver cancer. But those alcoholic beverages over the years have probably sealed my fate there.

At least that’s what I’ve been led to believe.

If it seems like every day you being told something you enjoy gives you cancer or, possibly, helps lower your risks of the disease, you might be right.

An interesting study has shown that cancer research can be biased towards showing us the links to the disease even though some of those links are tenuous at best.

The researchers took 50 common household ingredients from a cookbook and searched for studies where those ingredients were examined as to their affect on cancer.

Specifically, they examined the cancer risk of the following ingredients: veal, salt, pepper, spice, flour, egg, bread, pork, butter, tomato, lemon, duck, onion, celery, carrot, parsley, mace, sherry, olive, mushroom, tripe, milk, cheese, coffee, bacon, sugar, lobster, potato, beef, lamb, mustard, nuts, wine, peas, corn, cinnamon, cayenne, orange, tea, rum, raisin, bay leaf, cloves, thyme, vanilla, hickory, molasses, almonds, baking soda, ginger, and terrapin.

A whopping 80 per cent of these ingredients were, in one way or another, linked to cancer! That is the researchers found one or more studies which concluded that the ingredients lowered or raised the risk of certain cancers.

So goodbye scrambled eggs, cakes, roast dinners, ice-cream, sandwiches, and anything else you care to imagine. Well, not yet.

Luckily for everyone, the researchers also found that the authors of these studies were often over-stating the importance of their findings. Significant results regularly presented in the research abstracts but the non-significant results were buried in the detail.

Furthermore, many of the findings were small in size and were no longer salient when examined as part of a larger collection of studies.

In short, the evidence showing these links was pretty flimsy.

The biggest problem with this kind of research is that it can distract from less interesting, yet important, links to cancer, such as cigarettes, alcohol and sun exposure.

Because consumers are led to think that ‘everything causes cancer’ they either lose confidence in research and media reports or they can become apathetic about their chances of controlling their risk exposure. See the frustrated response to this issue from a cancer prevention organisation in Australia.

So why do the researchers oversell their findings? It’s the fault of most consumers.

We don’t like the truth to get in the way of a good story, which is why stories about the cancer fighting properties of green tea, apples, and pineapples catches our attention.

We are even drawn in by the sneaky headings like, ‘Everything causes cancer.’