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by Source: Healthwatch
January 1, 1999
The all-American junk food diet could be causing more than an epidemic of obesity, heart disease and diabetes. It could be giving millions of people cancer, too, experts say.
They say overfed Americans may be fat but they are not getting the proper nutrition — and they may pay for their bad eating habits with cancer. Poor diet could damage cells in much the same way radiation does, said Bruce Ames of the University of California at Berkeley.
"Deficiency of vitamins folic acid, B12, B6, C, or E, iron or zinc, and probably selenium mimics radiation in damaging DNA," Ames told this week's conference of the Society of Toxicology in Reston, Va., near Washington.
"The percentage of the U.S. population that is deficient in these eight micronutrients ranges from 5 percent to 20 percent for each. We're talking about a sizable percentage of the population," he added.
Ames said 15 percent of the population is estimated to be deficient in vitamin C and 20 percent in vitamin E, despite recent government findings that 55 percent of the adult population is overweight.
The trouble is the food that puts on a layer of blubber is not the food the body needs to prevent cancer, Ames said. And the fattest people, with the worst diets, are the poorest.
"Micronutrient deficiency may explain why the quarter of the population that eats the fewest fruits and vegetables — five portions a day is advised — has about double the cancer rate of the quarter that eats the most," Ames said.
Such nutrients, known as antioxidants, work to cancel out the effects of so-called free radicals, which damage cell DNA. Free radicals are charged ions generated by chemicals, radiation such as sunlight and even the oxygen we breathe. To explain their effects on the body, scientists often point to rust, which is the damage cause to iron by oxidation.
Ames said the body, if given the right tools, can very effectively fight off such damage. Fears about pollution and chemical dumps are a distraction, he said, because poor diet is a much bigger cause of cancer.
"Nutrition is where it's at," he said. "I am convinced that if we got a multivitamin-mineral pill into the poor, we'd have an enormous increase in health."
But Ames said the contents of the vitamins should be controlled because too many vitamins can be as bad as too few. Most men already get too much iron, found in red meat and vegetables such as spinach, he noted.
Eating better, and eating less, could be the key not only to avoiding cancer but to living longer, other experts told the conference.
Dr. Ron Hart of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's National Center for Toxicological Research in Arkansas said dozens of animal tests have shown that staying a little hungry is an important key to long life.
"The lower the calories, the longer the life span," Hart told the conference. "Our studies have clearly shown that the greater the body weight, the higher the incidence of spontaneous tumor occurrence, the greater the susceptibility to chemical carcinogens and the shorter the life span."
This is not true in cases of real malnutrition. Underfed animals have to get all the right nutrients, Hart said. "In the absence of proper genes which are responsible," he said. Drugs that have similar effects could help humans survive famine, disease and other stresses better and, perhaps, live longer.
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