3 ms·

Is everything we eat associated with cancer? A systematic cookbook review (2013)

65 points by mutant_glofish 3y ago

chmod600 3y ago
Maybe the control group was fasting. That would explain a lot.
- haldujai 3y ago
  I really want to laugh at this but I can’t suspend my disbelief that a nutritional study in this vein actually has a control group.
homero 3y ago
Since cancer is us, it eats everything we do
- dp-hackernews 3y ago
  I think that's an incomplete statement, especially when you consider the information presented in the video I linked above...
baxtr 3y ago
Conclusions: Associations with cancer risk or benefits have been claimed for most food ingredients. Many single studies highlight implausibly large effects, even though evidence is weak. Effect sizes shrink in meta-analyses.
- rubyfan 3y ago
  So yeah lots of associations but most of the associations are bullshit.
shusaku 3y ago
> in contrast, the 10 ingredients for which a relevant cancer risk study was not identified were generally more obscure: bay leaf, cloves, thyme, vanilla, hickory, molasses, almonds, baking soda, ginger, and terrapin. For a truly cancer neutral food then, here are your ingredients. Hickory smoked ginger-molasses Macaroons seems like a start.
- ggm 3y ago
  That'd be the vegan option. If you use it as a marinade for the terrapin it's a meat eater friendly meal and wouldn't trigger alpha-gal mammalian meat intolerance.
- almostnormal 3y ago
  Smoked? That's crazy dangerous!
- msla 3y ago
  Can cancer tell the difference between turtle soup and mock turtle soup? (Or is the Mock Turtle extinct by now?)
dbs 3y ago
It’s largely the metals and chemicals that get into contact with our food. But what do I know.
- Broken_Hippo 3y ago
  "But what do I know" If you aren't doing science in this field, probably not much. Like most of us, honestly.
- adamredwoods 3y ago
  This is my thought. I hope these studies consider how food is grown, transported, preserved, or prepared. Plastics from storage, quality of water for washing, quality of feed for animals, chemicals for insecticides, etc.
siva7 3y ago
It's a funny game. You can bing $food + cancer and will surely be given some study or internet article claiming $food causing cancer
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
FoodWThrow 3y ago
Meaningless. Anything that doesn't control for the amount of contamination that the ingredients has is meaningless. Are the participants eating meat? Red meat? Processed meat? Cured meat? We already know there's a connection with colon cancer and sodium nitrate, does the study account for that? Or just lumps everything into red meat category? What about heavy metals like lead and cadmium that we keep finding in cocoa and coffee? What about glyphosate that is found in more than 80% of the urine samples drawn from US, children included? Then we go outside US, and enter the realm of antibiotics... the list is effectively endless. Using epidemiology to find correlation is absolutely meaningless if you cannot control for contaminants/adulteration. At best, the result is mildly harmless. At worst, it is drawing the wrong conclusion that we actually know a damn thing about what we eat -- we don't.
- lm28469 3y ago
  > Anything that doesn't control for the amount of contamination that the ingredients has is meaningless At that level of detail I'm starting to think anything other than forcing 2000 identical twins in a closed and sterile environment to experiment with total control is mostly bs. You just cannot control for all the variables otherwise
  - haldujai 3y ago
    Astute observation as to why most nutritional studies and claims are entirely bs and should be ignored.
RetroTechie 3y ago
A more practical view is that food is both needed by the body, and at the same time does 'damage' to it. Causing or promoting cancer may be among that damage. Thus a varied diet is good because: a) It limits the damage any 1 foodstuff can do, and b) It 'trains' the body to counteract that damage using the widest variety of inputs. You'd have less damage by eating less, but of course there's a point where the negatives (feeling weak / thirsty, vitamin shortages etc) outweigh the benefits. Optimum depends on a wiiiiide variety of interacting factors like genetics, environment, activity level, source & processing of foods, cooking methods, gut microbiome, just to name a few. TLDR; we know 'nothing' about what exactly food does in the body. Food science is not an exact science. Don't believe me? Go read some food-related scientific studies. The more you dive into the details, the more things become fuzzy. Not to mention in-vitro vs. in-vivo, the difficulty of establishing control groups, and more. In essence it's mostly statistics + theories + lab tests + educated guesswork. And meta-studies. :-) Nothing wrong with that, btw - as long as those elements are well done, you can still come up with useful findings.
ElectronBadger 3y ago
Pfff, like we didn't know the best evidence for such a trivia: when you stop eating, you won't develop cancer. Case closed.
dp-hackernews 3y ago
You've Been Lied to about CANCER!!! [with Dr Thomas Seyfried, PhD] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EN58tZ6dspA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EN58tZ6dspA
csense 3y ago
A couple thoughts: - If you don't have cancer and stop eating, you'll likely die of starvation before you get cancer. - California made a law that says you have to label products if they contain stuff that might cause cancer. As a result, every product that might ever get sold in California has a label that says "This thing might cause cancer". It's safer to have the label just in case. Otherwise you'd have to check every cancer claim anyone publishes anywhere against all the inputs everywhere along your supply chain, recursively all the way back to farms and mines. Can you say with confidence that if some guy at the University of Boondocks publishes an article in the Timbuktu Journal of Basket-Weaving saying X might cause cancer, you'll see it? Can you say with confidence that even if you do, you'll always know if your supplier's supplier's supplier is using X? Easier to just say "We can't be bothered, just slap a cancer warning on everything we make so our liability goes away" and be done with it. For those reasons, I would say the claim "Everything we eat is associated with cancer" is true, but not useful.
thenerdhead 3y ago
Eggs are good for you, eggs are bad for you. Sugar is good for you, sugar is bad for you. This will likely be the same science flip-flopping you'll see until you die.

chmod600 3y ago

Maybe the control group was fasting. That would explain a lot.

haldujai 3y ago
I really want to laugh at this but I can’t suspend my disbelief that a nutritional study in this vein actually has a control group.

homero 3y ago

Since cancer is us, it eats everything we do

dp-hackernews 3y ago
I think that's an incomplete statement, especially when you consider the information presented in the video I linked above...

baxtr 3y ago

Conclusions: Associations with cancer risk or benefits have been claimed for most food ingredients. Many single studies highlight implausibly large effects, even though evidence is weak. Effect sizes shrink in meta-analyses.

rubyfan 3y ago
So yeah lots of associations but most of the associations are bullshit.

shusaku 3y ago

> in contrast, the 10 ingredients for which a relevant cancer risk study was not identified were generally more obscure: bay leaf, cloves, thyme, vanilla, hickory, molasses, almonds, baking soda, ginger, and terrapin. For a truly cancer neutral food then, here are your ingredients. Hickory smoked ginger-molasses Macaroons seems like a start.

ggm 3y ago
That'd be the vegan option. If you use it as a marinade for the terrapin it's a meat eater friendly meal and wouldn't trigger alpha-gal mammalian meat intolerance.
almostnormal 3y ago
Smoked? That's crazy dangerous!
msla 3y ago
Can cancer tell the difference between turtle soup and mock turtle soup? (Or is the Mock Turtle extinct by now?)

dbs 3y ago

It’s largely the metals and chemicals that get into contact with our food. But what do I know.

Broken_Hippo 3y ago
"But what do I know" If you aren't doing science in this field, probably not much. Like most of us, honestly.
adamredwoods 3y ago
This is my thought. I hope these studies consider how food is grown, transported, preserved, or prepared. Plastics from storage, quality of water for washing, quality of feed for animals, chemicals for insecticides, etc.

siva7 3y ago

It's a funny game. You can bing $food + cancer and will surely be given some study or internet article claiming $food causing cancer

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

FoodWThrow 3y ago

Meaningless. Anything that doesn't control for the amount of contamination that the ingredients has is meaningless. Are the participants eating meat? Red meat? Processed meat? Cured meat? We already know there's a connection with colon cancer and sodium nitrate, does the study account for that? Or just lumps everything into red meat category? What about heavy metals like lead and cadmium that we keep finding in cocoa and coffee? What about glyphosate that is found in more than 80% of the urine samples drawn from US, children included? Then we go outside US, and enter the realm of antibiotics... the list is effectively endless. Using epidemiology to find correlation is absolutely meaningless if you cannot control for contaminants/adulteration. At best, the result is mildly harmless. At worst, it is drawing the wrong conclusion that we actually know a damn thing about what we eat -- we don't.

lm28469 3y ago
> Anything that doesn't control for the amount of contamination that the ingredients has is meaningless At that level of detail I'm starting to think anything other than forcing 2000 identical twins in a closed and sterile environment to experiment with total control is mostly bs. You just cannot control for all the variables otherwise
- haldujai 3y ago
  Astute observation as to why most nutritional studies and claims are entirely bs and should be ignored.

RetroTechie 3y ago

A more practical view is that food is both needed by the body, and at the same time does 'damage' to it. Causing or promoting cancer may be among that damage. Thus a varied diet is good because: a) It limits the damage any 1 foodstuff can do, and b) It 'trains' the body to counteract that damage using the widest variety of inputs. You'd have less damage by eating less, but of course there's a point where the negatives (feeling weak / thirsty, vitamin shortages etc) outweigh the benefits. Optimum depends on a wiiiiide variety of interacting factors like genetics, environment, activity level, source & processing of foods, cooking methods, gut microbiome, just to name a few. TLDR; we know 'nothing' about what exactly food does in the body. Food science is not an exact science. Don't believe me? Go read some food-related scientific studies. The more you dive into the details, the more things become fuzzy. Not to mention in-vitro vs. in-vivo, the difficulty of establishing control groups, and more. In essence it's mostly statistics + theories + lab tests + educated guesswork. And meta-studies. :-) Nothing wrong with that, btw - as long as those elements are well done, you can still come up with useful findings.

ElectronBadger 3y ago

Pfff, like we didn't know the best evidence for such a trivia: when you stop eating, you won't develop cancer. Case closed.

dp-hackernews 3y ago

You've Been Lied to about CANCER!!! [with Dr Thomas Seyfried, PhD] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EN58tZ6dspA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EN58tZ6dspA

csense 3y ago

A couple thoughts: - If you don't have cancer and stop eating, you'll likely die of starvation before you get cancer. - California made a law that says you have to label products if they contain stuff that might cause cancer. As a result, every product that might ever get sold in California has a label that says "This thing might cause cancer". It's safer to have the label just in case. Otherwise you'd have to check every cancer claim anyone publishes anywhere against all the inputs everywhere along your supply chain, recursively all the way back to farms and mines. Can you say with confidence that if some guy at the University of Boondocks publishes an article in the Timbuktu Journal of Basket-Weaving saying X might cause cancer, you'll see it? Can you say with confidence that even if you do, you'll always know if your supplier's supplier's supplier is using X? Easier to just say "We can't be bothered, just slap a cancer warning on everything we make so our liability goes away" and be done with it. For those reasons, I would say the claim "Everything we eat is associated with cancer" is true, but not useful.

thenerdhead 3y ago

Eggs are good for you, eggs are bad for you. Sugar is good for you, sugar is bad for you. This will likely be the same science flip-flopping you'll see until you die.