How junk food causes cancer - as Morgan Spurlock, maker of "Super Size Me", dies from disease aged 53

Ho Hum! Just the usual elitist scorn for anything popular, regardless of the evidence. They make a nod to the evidence but it is a pathetic nod. The Singapore study they mention was in vitro (cells in glass dishes) and the European study of mainly middle class ladies "excluded participants with extreme energy intake", failed to control for income and found only marginal hazard ratios. See below for links to the original studies:

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/poor-diet-increases-cancer-risk-scientists-uncover-missing-link

and

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00394-023-03270-1#data-availability-and-materials

Studies of cells in glass dishes notoriously fail to predict effects in actual human beings and income is the most pervasive predictor of poor health and is hence a serious potential confounder

And the study is moreover a correlational one -- to which the old dictum "correlation is not proof of causation" applies.

Perhaps the most amusing thing about the European study is that it was based on questionnaires -- self reports of food intake. I have recently noted a case where food questionnaires predicted ill health while a more direct measure of the same food intake by the same peope did not.

https://pcwatch.blogspot.com/2024/05/salt-may-increase-risk-of-stomach.html

In other words, self reports are a poor predictor of actual behaviour. Psychologists have known that since the 1930s but it has yet to dent the faith of medical researchers, apparently

But it is a paradox of logic that while correlations are no proof of causation, their absence can be an excellent DISPROOF of causation. And I have recently noted a case where a correlational study produced strong evidence that ultra-processed food is NOT bad for you. Too bad about that bit of evidence, I guess

https://pcwatch.blogspot.com/2024/05/fresh-health-warning-over-ultra.html

And I will not waste words on the Spurlock stunt

To give hope to those who tend to eat whatever they like I will mention my own experience. I have always been a keen eater of "incorrect" food -- including many visits to McDonald's. Yet recent scans and tests of my splanchnic organs (liver, kidneys etc) have revealed them to be now in just about as a good a shape as they were when I was 18 -- and I am now 80. Don't let the panic-merchants get you down. It's your genes, not your food that dictate how healthy you are and will be


The link between junk food and cancer was put back into focus today after the death of Super Size Me documentary maker Morgan Spurlock - who died from the disease.

His family said Spurlock, 53, succumbed to 'complications' of cancer but did not reveal which type he had or how long he'd been battling it.

There is no indication his condition was linked to the 2004 movie, which saw him consume nothing but McDonald's meals for a month as a health experiment - even though he suffered a number of health issues in the immediate aftermath.

Piles of research in recent decades have shown that eating lots of processed foods is linked to at least 34 different types of cancers - even in people who are not obese.

Even though the link between ultra-processed foods - including fast food, soda, chips, ice-cream, sugary cereals and deli meats - and cancer is well established, the exact mechanism is still being understood.

One of the ways UPFs may cause cancer is due to their makeup. These foods often contain high levels of saturated fat, added sugars and sodium and are low in nutrients such as vitamins and minerals, and fiber.

If we eat too many ultra-processed foods, we may not eat enough of the foods in the diet that we know boost the immune system and help prevent cancer from forming, such as wholegrains, fruit and vegetables.

Secondly, consuming these foods regularly can lead to weight gain. Being above a healthy weight increases your risk of developing 13 different cancers, including cancers of the bowel, kidney, pancreas, esophagus, endometrium, liver and breast (after menopause).

Excess weight can trigger a host of hormonal changes that can cause tumors to grow.

A study earlier this year also uncovered a potential missing link between how eating junk food increases the risk of cancer.

The research out of Singapore found that a compound released when the body breaks down sugary and fatty foods switches off a gene that fights off cancer.

It could, at least in part, explain why cancers among young, ostensibly healthy Americans are becoming so prevalent, particularly tumors in the colon.

The academics looked at the effect of methylglyoxal, a compound released when the body breaks down sugary and fatty foods, on a gene that helps fight off tumors.

They found that methylglyoxal was able to temporarily shut off the BRCA2 gene's ability to protect against cancer forming and growing.

Repeated exposure, such as through eating processed foods, would increase the amount of damage to genes like BRCA2.

The research adds to a long list of studies suggesting that diet could have an impact on cancer risk, particularly colorectal cancer.

Research from the Cleveland Clinic, for example, found that people under 50 who ate diets rich in red meat and sugar had lower levels of the compound citrate, which is created when the body converts food into energy and has been shown to inhibit tumor growth.

Red and processed meat also contain compounds such as heme and nitrates, which, when broken down in the body, form compounds that can damage the cells lining the bowel, increasing the likelihood of cancer developing.

UPFs refers to items which contain ingredients people would not usually add when they were cooking homemade food.

These additions might include chemicals, colorings, sweeteners and preservatives that extend shelf life.

One example is phthalates - a group of chemicals used to make plastics more durable.

The chemicals get into food mainly through packaging and food handling equipment such as cellophane and plastic in contact with food. Exposure to phthalates has been linked to breast cancer.

Other research, including the biggest analysis of evidence to date involving 10million people, found that eating a lot of foods such as ready meals, sugary cereals and mass-produced bread is linked to an increased risk of 32 health problems, including cancer.

A 2023 study published in the European Journal of Nutrition found cancer risk shot up when people ate just 350g of ultra-processed food per day over the course of a decade - the equivalent of a large packet of chips or half a sharing bag of Skittles.

This amount was linked to a 20 percent higher risk of head and neck cancer and a 25 percent higher risk of esophageal adenocarcinoma, a type of cancer that grows in the lining of the food pipe.

The study said the disease could result from detrimental changes in gut flora, as well as potential hormonal effects.

Dr David Katz, a specialist in preventive and lifestyle medicine who was not involved in the study, previously told CNN: 'If UPFs contribute to cancer risk, they do it to a small extent by contributing to obesity, and to a much larger extent by other mechanisms.'

'What might those be? Diet-induced inflammation; disruption of the microbiome; adverse epigenetic effects; and many other possibilities come to mind.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13456763/junk-food-cause-cancer-morgan-spurlock-death-super-size-me.html

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Top academic accuses the British Medical Journal of 'abandoning science' after rejecting research 'because of their views on the trans debate'

The BMJ is HIGHLY political and has been for long time

The British Medical Journal has been accused of 'abandoning science' after it rejected research from top academics over their views on the trans debate.

One researcher had his paper rejected because he was 'opinionated' and had tweeted in support of author JK Rowling's gender-critical views.

The other's research was taken offline by BMJ staff who accused him of being 'transphobic' based on a student paper article about him. Both academics saw the discussions in BMJ staff emails after making Freedom of Information requests.

Dr Michael Biggs, an Oxford University sociologist, was blacklisted over a paper saying the official number of transgender people in the UK – 262,000 – is unreliable because of a confusingly-worded census question.

He said a number of people who don't speak English as a first language had answered 'no' to: 'Is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?'

BMJ staff emails claimed Dr Biggs' piece 'portrays trans individuals as uneducated and implies they weren't able to understand the question on the census'.

The emails also revealed concerns about him 'being known for being transphobic' after a student paper in 2018 claimed he had tweeted critical views of trans people.

Dr Biggs said 'some journal editors... don't care if an article is true, but whether it helps disadvantaged or oppressed minorities'.

Dr John Armstrong, a mathematician at King's College London, submitted a paper to BMJ Open on findings that institutions with higher 'Athena Swan' ratings – an award given for promoting gender equality – had fewer women in senior roles.

After it was rejected, he found a member of staff had told a colleague his social media account had 'coloured our impression of the manuscript'.

One email said 'he's quite argumentative and opinionated', and highlighted how he retweeted a JK Rowling post supporting campaigner Maya Forstater, who lost her job after saying people could not change their biological sex.

Dr Armstrong said: 'If a journal censors findings because they don't like the results or the author, it has abandoned science.'

The BMJ denied it would reject a paper for 'political or ideological reasons'.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13458211/british-medical-journal-abandoning-science-transgender.html

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Healthy adults who take fish oil supplements could be at greater risk of suffering heart attack or stroke for the first time, study finds

Amusing to see conventional wisdom reversed. This is actually not the first finding of ill-effects from fishoil but it is good to see it updated

Healthy adults who take fish oil supplements could be at greater risk of suffering heart trouble for the first time, a study suggests.

As a rich source of omega 3 fatty acids, fish oil is often recommended as a dietary preventive to ward off the development of cardiovascular disease. It is also credited with various other beneficial effects such as easing joint pain.

But new research suggests taking the popular supplement could in fact increase the chances of heart disease and stroke in healthy adults, while reducing the risk in those with a history of disease.

The study - which involved more than 415,000 Britons - looked at the associations between fish oil supplements and new cases of atrial fibrillation, heart attack, stroke and heart failure and death.

They assessed the potential of these supplements on the risk of progressing from good heart health, classed, to the secondary stage of atrial fibrillation, third stage major cardiovascular events such as a heart attack and death.

Nearly a third - 130,365 - of the participants, aged 40-69, said they regularly used fish oil supplements, including a high number of older and White people, and women.

Alcohol intake and the ratio of oily to non-oily fish eaten were also higher, while the proportions of current smokers and those living in deprived areas were lower.

During an average follow-up of 12 years, 18,367 developed the abnormal heart rhythm disturbance atrial fibrillation, 22,636 had a heart attack or stroke or developed heart failure, and 22,140 died - 14,902 without atrial fibrillation or heart disease.

Of those who progressed from good heart health to atrial fibrillation, 3085 developed heart failure, 1180 had a stroke, and 1415 a heart attack.

Some 2436 of those with heart failure died, alongside 2088 who suffered stroke, and 2098 following a heart attack, according to findings published in BMJ Medicine.

Regularly use of fish oil supplements had different roles in cardiovascular health, disease progression, and death, the findings indicated.

Those who regularly used them with no signs of disease had a 13 per cent higher risk of developing atrial fibrillation and a five per cent greater risk of stroke.

But among those who had cardiovascular disease at the start, regular use of fish oil supplements reduced the risk of progressing from atrial fibrillation to a heart attack by 15 per cent and from heart failure to death by nine per cent.

The risk of transitioning from good health to heart attack, stroke or heart failure was six per cent higher in women. It was also six per cent higher in non-smokers among fish oil takers.

Meanwhile, the protective effect of these supplements on the transition from good health to death was greater in men (seven per cent lower risk) and older participants (11 per cent lower risk).

Led by Sun Yat-Sen University, China, researchers admit limitations to the study including that dosage and formulation of fish oil was not recorded, which experts suggest could be key to the results.

Nevertheless, they conclude: 'Regular use of fish oil supplements might have different roles in the progression of cardiovascular disease.

'Further studies are needed to determine the precise mechanisms for the development and prognosis of cardiovascular disease events with regular use of fish oil supplements.' It is not the first study to make such conclusions with a Cochrane review of research in 2018 comparing 79 trials finding it made 'little or no difference to risk of cardiovascular events, coronary heart deaths, coronary heart disease events, stroke or heart irregularities'.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13445061/Healthy-adults-fish-oil-supplements-heart-attack-stroke.html

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Salt may increase risk of stomach cancer by 40%, study suggests

Groan! Another witless attack on salt below. The journal article is here:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10120-024-01502-9

I have written previously on the salt phobia here:

http://jonjayray.com/short/salt.html

And here:

http://jonjayray.com/short/salt2.html

And here:

http://jonjayray.com/saltsum.html

And for what it is worth, I have always been a keen salt user but I had a gastroscopy recently which showed my stomach to be completely normal, which is pretty good for an 80-year-old guy.

OK. On to the latest bit of nonsense. Once again it was an extreme-groups analysis in which they had to throw away half of their data to find something to talk about. So it seems probable that there was in fact NO significant linear relationship between illness and salt consupption.

And it's almost amusing that they found the association only with REPORTS of salt usage not with an estimate of actual salt usage. Bleah!

The one undisputable finding of salt research is that LOW salt can kill you. There is even a name for that: Hyponatremia

A new study might make you think twice before reaching for the salt shaker at your next meal.

Nutritionists from the Center for Public Health at the University of Vienna discovered that people from the UK who added salt to most of their meals were 41 percent more likely to develop stomach cancer than those who used the topping sparingly.

Previous studies in China, Japan and Korea have linked a salty diet to stomach cancer - but this is one of the first to show the link in Westerners.

Though the Austrian study was merely observational, older studies have suggested that excess salt might erode the protective coating on the stomach, causing damage to the tissue there and leading to cancerous mutations.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13401167/additive-increase-risk-stomach-cancer-salty-salt.html

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Fresh health warning over ultra-processed foods as 30-year study warns they marginally raise your risk of an early death

The academic source of the article below is:
https://www.bmj.com/content/385/bmj-2023-078476

Its conclusions are utter rubbish, reflecting the biases of the authors rather than what their data shows. It is an extreme quartile study -- meaning that they had to throw away half of their data before they could show any correlations. And even then only very weak associations were shown in only some cases.

And given the large number of possible correlations examined, an experiment-wise error-rate approach to significance testing should have been used, as in a Bonferroni correction, which would have reduced ALL relationships in this study to a nullity.

The study is good evidence therefore that ultra-processed foods are NOT harmful to you. Pathetic!

Conservatives are used to Leftists ignoring facts in favour of their theories and epidemiologists are much the same. Both groups show a common human tendency to adopt simple generalizations to explain their world. Sadly for us all, reality is complex and unforgiving so simple theories can lead to conclusions that are radically contrary to the truth -- e.g. Affirmative action has not removed black failure and simple foods are not safer than complex ones


Eating too many ultra-processed foods (UPFs) may send you to an early grave, a study suggests.

Ready meals, fizzy drinks and ice creams appear to pose the greatest danger to human health.

Harvard University researchers tracked 115,000 healthy US adults over the course of three decades.

Four per cent more deaths occurred among participants who ate around seven servings of junk a day, compared against a group who ate half as much.

While the risk was only small, the team argued their findings echoed calls to limit certain types of UPFs.

The umbrella term is used to cover anything edible made with colourings, sweeteners and preservatives that extend shelf life.

Ready meals, ice cream and tomato ketchup are some of the best-loved examples of products that fall under the umbrella UPF term, now synonymous with foods offering little nutritional value.

They are different to processed foods, which are tinkered to make them last longer or enhance their taste, such as cured meat, cheese and fresh bread.

Yet dietitians argue this sweeping judgement wrongly fingers 'healthy' options like fish fingers and baked beans.

Ultra-processed foods, such as sausages, cereals, biscuits and fizzy drinks, are formulations made mostly or entirely from substances derived from foods and additives.

They contain little or no unprocessed or minimally processed foods, such as fruit, vegetables, seeds and eggs.

The foods are usually packed with sugars, oils, fats and salt, as well as additives, such as preservatives, antioxidants and stabilisers.

Ultra-processed foods are often presented as ready-to-consume, taste good and are cheap.

The new paper adds to growing evidence illustrating the health risks of UPFs, which have been vilified for decades over their observed links to cancer and dementia.

Over the 34-year follow-up period, the researchers recorded 48,193 deaths, including more than 13,000 due to cancer and just over 11,000 attributed to cardiovascular diseases.

However, no specific relationship between total UPF consumption and cancer or heart disease deaths was observed.

Instead, the elevated risk — amounting to an extra 64 deaths per every 100,000 person-years — was only seen for deaths from all causes.

They also found no link between premature death and condiments, sauces and savoury snacks.

Even with sugary drinks and ready meals, the risk was less pronounced after researchers factored in the overall diet quality of the participants, who were quizzed about their eating habits every four years.

The risk was up to 13 per cent for some UPFs.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, the scientists said: 'The findings provide support for limiting consumption of certain types of ultra-processed food for long term health.'

But experts today criticised the research.

Sir David Spiegelhalter, emeritus professor of statistics at the University of Cambridge, said: 'This study shows weak associations of ultra-processed foods with overall mortality.'

Dietitian Dr Duane Mellor, spokesperson for the British Dietetic Association, said: 'It is also noticeable that those who consumed most ultra-processed foods tended to eat few vegetables, fruit, legumes and wholegrain.

'It might not be as simple as that those who ate more ultra-processed foods are more likely to die earlier — it is quite possible that these foods might displace healthier foods from the diet.'

He added: 'Not all groups of UPFs are associated with the same health risks, with sugar and artificially sweetened drinks and processed meats being most clearly associated with risk of an early death.'

Professor Gunter Kuhnle, an expert in nutrition and food science at the University of Reading, said it was 'impossible to know how reliable the results are' because of how the study was carried out.

He said: 'Results, therefore, should be treated with a lot of caution. 'I don't think this study provides evidence suggesting limiting certain foods just because of their level of processing.

'Public health policy should be informed by evidence, and there is very good evidence about the health effects of foods based on their composition — which is largely confirmed by this study.

'In contrast, there is still virtually no robust evidence for an effect of 'ultra-processing' specifically on health.'

The UK is the worst in Europe for eating UPFs, which make up an estimated 57 per cent of the national diet.

They are thought to be a key driver of obesity, which costs the NHS around £6.5billion a year.

Often containing colours, emulsifiers, flavours, and other additives, they typically undergo multiple industrial processes which research has found degrades the physical structure of foods, making it rapid to absorb.

This in turn increases blood sugar, reduces satiety and damages the microbiome - the community of 'friendly' bacteria that live inside us and which we depend for good health.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13395481/ultra-processed-foods-30-year-study-risk-early-death.html

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