Colon cancer, commonly known as bowel cancer, is a cancer from uncontrolled cell growth in the colon, rectum, or appendix.
A new study on living animals has shown for the first time that eating cocoa (the raw material in chocolate) can help to prevent intestinal complaints linked to oxidative stress, including colon carcinogenesis onset caused by chemical substances.The growing interest amongst the scientific community to identify those foods capable of preventing diseases has now categorized cocoa as a ‘superfood’. It has been recognised as an excellent source of phytochemical compounds, which offer potential health benefits. Headed by scientists from the Institute of Food Science and Technology and Nutrition (ICTAN) and recently published in the Molecular Nutrition & Food Research journal, the new study supports this idea and upholds that cacao consumption helps to prevent intestinal complaints linked to oxidative stress, such as the onset of chemically induced colon
carcinogenesis.“Being exposed to different poisons in the diet like toxins, mutagens and procarcinogens, the intestinal mucus is very susceptible to pathologies,” explains María Ángeles Martín Arribas, lead author of the study and researcher at ICTAN. She adds that “a food like cocoa, which is rich in polyphenols, seems to play an important role in protecting against disease.”The study on live animals (rats) has for the first time confirmed the potential protection effect that flavonoids in cocoa have against colon cancer onset. For eight weeks the authors of the study fed the rats with a cocoa-rich (12%) diet and carcinogenesis was induced.
Possible protection
Doctor Martín Arribas outlines that “four weeks after being administered with the chemical compound azoxymethane (AOM), intestinal mucus from premalignant neoplastic lesions appeared. These lesions are called ‘aberrant crypt foci’ and are considered to be good markers of colon cancer pathogenesis.”The results of the study showed that the rats fed a cocoa-rich diet had a significantly reduced number of aberrant crypts in the colon induced by the carcinogen. Likewise, this sample saw an improvement in their endogenous antioxidant defences and a decrease in the markers of oxidative damage induced by the toxic compound in this cell.The researchers conclude that the protection effect of cocoa can stop cell-signalling pathways involved in cell proliferation and, therefore, subsequent neoplasty and tumour formation. Lastly, the animals fed with the cocoa-rich diet showed an increase in apoptosis or programmed cell death as a chemoprevention mechanism against the development of the carcinogenesis.
Although more research is required to determine what bioactive compounds in cocoa are responsible for such effects, the authors conclude that a cocoa-rich diet seems capable of reducing induced oxidative stress. It could also have protection properties in the initial stages of colon cancer as it reduces premalignant neoplastic lesion formation.
A not-so-guilty pleasure
(source- Molecular Nutrition & Food Research journal)
Eating Foods Fried in Olive or Sunflower Oil Not Tied To Heart Disease or Earlier Death
In a new study published in BMJ on Tuesday, researchers find that consuming fried food is not
linked to heart disease or earlier death, as long as the frying is done in in olive or sunflower oil. But they also note that the people they studied live in Spain, where like other Mediterranean countries they use olive or sunflower oil for frying, so this result would most likely be different in countries where people fry with solid and re-used oils.Professor Pilar Guallar-Castillón from Autonomous University of Madrid, and colleagues set out to do the study because while high consumption of fried food has been tied to higher risk factors for heart disease, such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol and obesity, the link to heart disease itself had not been fully investigated.
People in Western countries use frying more than any other way of cooking food. Frying changes the nutritional content of food: it loses water and takes up fat, increasing its calorie content. Another thing that happens is that frying degrades oils, especially when re-used, creating more unhealthy trans fats and losing the healthier unsaturated fats. These unhealthier fats end up in the food that is eaten.For the study, Guallar-Castillón and colleagues used data covering 40,757 adults aged 29 to 69 in the Spanish cohort of EPIC study. EPIC (the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition study) is a large study of diet, health and lifestyle that has recruited in total about half a million participants in ten European countries. None of the participants they studied had heart disease at the start of the study. Through trained interviewers, the participants gave information about their diet and cooking methods. Fried food was defined as being where frying was the only method used to prepare the food, and the participants were also asked whether the food was fried, battered, crumbed or sautéed.Data about coronary heart disease events and deaths came from hospital discharge registers, population based registers of heart attacks and death registers.When they analyzed the data, Guallar-Castillón and colleagues found that over the median follow-up of 11 years (up to 2004), there were 606 coronary heart disease events and 1,135 deaths (from all causes).They then sorted the participants according to how much fried food was in their diet, so the ones who ate the least fried food were at the bottom of the list and the ones who ate the most were at the top.They then compared the results in quartiles, for instance comparing the 25% who ate the least fried food (the first, or bottom quartile) with the next 25%, (the second quartile) and the third 25%, and lastly the fourth 25% (the ones who ate the most fried food).When they did this they found, after adjusting for energy intake, BMI, high blood pressure and other risk factors, that the risk of coronary heart disease events was not significantly higher in the second, third and fourth quartiles compared to the first. (Eg the the multivariate hazard ratio of coronary heart disease in the fourth quartile was 1.08 (95% confidence interval 0.82 to 1.43; P for trend 0.74) compared to the first).They also found the results did not vary between those who used olive oil and those who used sunflower oil to fry their food.
And there was no link between fried food cosumption and death (from any cause).
The authors conclude:
"In a Mediterranean country where olive and sunflower oils are the most commonly used fats for frying, and where large amounts of fried foods are consumed both at and away from home, no association was observed between fried food consumption and the risk of coronary heart disease or death."In an accompanying editorial, Michael Leitzmann, a professor from the University of Regensburg Germany France
However, they also caution this "does not mean that frequent meals of fish and chips will have no health consequences".They also note, as do the authors, that specific aspects of frying food, such as the type of oil used, could make a difference. (source- BMJ)
