Whoopee! Fibre diet 'doesn't prevent cancer': "A comprehensive study challenges the one accepted truism of dietary research since the 1960s. Eating lots of fibre may do little to protect against colon cancer, the latest analysis of evidence has found. While people who eat the most fibre - in the form of cereals, vegetables and fruit - are slightly less likely to get colon cancer, the association is weak and disappears altogether when other factors are taken into account, according to an international team in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The research undermines one of the greatest of dietary shibboleths, first enunciated by the British physician Denis Burkitt in the 1960s. Working in Africa, he noticed that rates of colon cancer were low, and put it down to the fibre-rich diet of local people".