Eating Vegetables Doesn’t Stop Cancer
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Eating Vegetables Doesn’t Stop Cancer
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Re: Eating Vegetables Doesn’t Stop Cancer
#2The underlying research article is
"Fruit and Vegetable Intake and Overall Cancer Risk in the European Prospective Investigation Into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC)" by Paolo Boffetta, Elisabeth Couto, Janine Wichmann, et al. Journal of the National Cancer Institute Advance Access published online on April 6, 2010 JNCI Journal of the National Cancer Institute, doi:10.1093/jnci/djq072
I remember years ago reading a statement by Jerry Pournelle in Byte Magazine that he thought people eating more fruits and vegetables could prevent more cases of cancer than all the activities of the United States Environmental Protection Agency combined, but perhaps we now have to reject that hypothesis.
Re: Eating Vegetables Doesn’t Stop Cancer
#3Lowers risk of heart disease or stroke instead. Sounds good to me!
Re: Eating Vegetables Doesn’t Stop Cancer
#4Lowers risk of heart disease or stroke instead. Sounds good to me!
It also lowers the chance of cancer, which you wouldn't guess from the headline:
"Eating more vegetables was associated with a small but statistically significant reduction in cancer risk"
It's a 4% reduction for 2 extra servings of veg, which they helpfully illustrated by saying if you had 10% chance of cancer without vegetables, eating them would mean you would then have a 9.6% chance. I'm guessing that was an attempt to downplay the significance. If they'd said for every 25 people who get cancer, one wouldn't then it might have seemed more like good news.
They also claim that number could be wrong and list various factors why the results could be skewed, but never explain why they think the number would only get worse, rather than better due to these confounding factors.
Re: Eating Vegetables Doesn’t Stop Cancer
#5Lowers risk of heart disease or stroke instead. Sounds good to me!
But that means people eating more fruit and vegetables will actually increase the cancer rate in the society, as fewer people die before they develop cancer (which is an almost inevitable event in an ageing body).
Of course, this is related to the effect that you can double the number of people that suffer from a aggressive form of cancer by finding a treatment that makes them live twice as long after diagnosis (if you count all current cases and not only all new cases). Statistics and epidemiology are, ahm, fun is not quite the right word.
Re: Eating Vegetables Doesn’t Stop Cancer
#6Driving cars doesn't stop cancer.
Is everything now being judged on whether or not it stops cancer? What a rediculous headline.
Re: Eating Vegetables Doesn’t Stop Cancer
#7There is a related paper that I can't seem to find. The gist of which was:
Studies on the cancer-fighting prowess of many antioxidants often fail to mention that your body naturally synthesizes a lot of antioxidants (e.g. melatonin and glutathione). While ingested antioxidants are known to protect cells in vitro and theoretically do so in vivo, relative to naturally synthesized antioxidants they might account for little additional protection.
(If someone could find that paper, I'd appreciate it.)
Re: Eating Vegetables Doesn’t Stop Cancer
#8Provocative Headlines Sell Newspapers
Re: Eating Vegetables Doesn’t Stop Cancer
#9Lowers risk of heart disease or stroke instead. Sounds good to me!
It also lowers the chance of cancer, which you wouldn't guess from the headline: " Eating more vegetables was associated with a small but statistically significant reduction in cancer risk" It's a 4% reduction for 2 extra servings of veg, which they helpfully illustrated by saying if you had 10% chance of cancer without vegetables, eating them would mean you would then have a 9.6% chance. I'm guessing that was an att…
A good discussion of the different ways to report results of medical interventions (including changes in diet) can be found here:
Re: Eating Vegetables Doesn’t Stop Cancer
#10Lowers risk of heart disease or stroke instead. Sounds good to me!
But that means people eating more fruit and vegetables will actually increase the cancer rate in the society, as fewer people die before they develop cancer (which is an almost inevitable event in an ageing body). Of course, this is related to the effect that you can double the number of people that suffer from a aggressive form of cancer by finding a treatment that makes them live twice as long after diagnosis (if y…
Looking for the "hard endpoint" of reduced all-cause mortality is always an important issue when studying a lifestyle intervention or medical intervention.