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Antioxidants and Cancer: Have we got it Backwards?

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Re: Antioxidants and Cancer: Have we got it Backwards?

#21

Post by restruct »

biohacker42 wrote: post #11

I'm not sure if we have it backwards, but the article definitely oversimplifies it. It also makes some embarrassing points for ephasis, plants using antioxidants as defenses, green tea might be, but I doubt many fruits are NOT meant to be eaten by animals. The health benefits of a diet high in fruits and vegetables are supported by very strong science. We've also had some very good recent research into vitamins and o…

> I doubt many fruits are NOT meant to be eaten by animals.

But plants did not evolve fruits to make animals healthier. Plants evolved fruits so that animals can spread the seeds.

Re: Antioxidants and Cancer: Have we got it Backwards?

#22

Post by fauigerzigerk »

restruct wrote: post #21
biohacker42 wrote: post #11

I'm not sure if we have it backwards, but the article definitely oversimplifies it. It also makes some embarrassing points for ephasis, plants using antioxidants as defenses, green tea might be, but I doubt many fruits are NOT meant to be eaten by animals. The health benefits of a diet high in fruits and vegetables are supported by very strong science. We've also had some very good recent research into vitamins and o…

> I doubt many fruits are NOT meant to be eaten by animals. But plants did not evolve fruits to make animals healthier. Plants evolved fruits so that animals can spread the seeds.

If you believe in evolution you'd have to put it the other way around: Plants who happened to evolve fruits that got spread around by animals had a higher chance of survival as a species.

Re: Antioxidants and Cancer: Have we got it Backwards?

#24

Post by fauigerzigerk »

pyre wrote: post #9
jcl wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's entirely possible that antioxidants make it less likely for you to get cancer but more likely to make cancer worse once you have it. Depending on how the two effects interact, the correlation could go either way. Interesting random blog page describing research that shows a fruit- and vegetable-rich diet may actually be bad for you: http://donmatesz.blogspot.com/2009/08/phytochemical-fallacie...

What I got from that blog post was 'there are lots of bad things in fruits and vegetables along with the good things'. Isn't that the truth for anything? Unless we start making foods that are homogeneous mixtures, every natural food that we eat will have good and bad things in it. I somehow don't think that the solution is to have a diet that's heavy in meats and carbohydrates. I think that it would be interesting to…

The problem with cancer rates from 200 years ago is that life-expectancy was so different and that they might not have have been able to identify the cause of death back then.

Re: Antioxidants and Cancer: Have we got it Backwards?

#25

Post by hs »

no discussion about cancer is complete without mentioning "the china study" by Collin Campbell

conclusion? eat whole food, plant-based diet

and we don't need labels like vegetarian/vegan. why? because eating fried fries, potatoe chips, smoking, drinking, sodas, candies ... while correctly not including animals ... are not healthy

Re: Antioxidants and Cancer: Have we got it Backwards?

#26

Post by hs »

run4yourlives wrote: post #12

I am continually astounded by how much, and at the same time how little we know about how our own bodies work.

i'm more impressed with how much conflicting misinformations floating around while seemingly scientific

claims like x improves y are abundant. sadly we don't often see the %quantitative improvements and fall into "every little bit helps"

then we get another claim like "a prevents b", then blindly follows. while a and x are good in its own rights, the 'interaction' effect is so complicated that taking them will become net negative

Re: Antioxidants and Cancer: Have we got it Backwards?

#27

Post by restruct »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #22
restruct wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I doubt many fruits are NOT meant to be eaten by animals. But plants did not evolve fruits to make animals healthier. Plants evolved fruits so that animals can spread the seeds.

If you believe in evolution you'd have to put it the other way around: Plants who happened to evolve fruits that got spread around by animals had a higher chance of survival as a species.

True, but a more accurate description of what you meant is "if you believe in evolution by natural selection, you'd have to put it the other way around."

Re: Antioxidants and Cancer: Have we got it Backwards?

#28

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

tokenadult wrote: post #13
randallsquared wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does? I think the vast majority of plants that most people (at least, where I live) eat are non-fruit. Potatoes, beans, rice and other grains...

The vast majority of plants that most people eat have been so altered by selective breeding that they are quite unlike wild plants. When Richard Dawkins spoke in my town in March 2009, he made a special point of ridiculing a video purporting to show that the banana was intelligently designed by a divine creator, and finished his comments on that issue by showing a picture of a wild banana, which looks very different…

Exactly what I was thinking as I read the parent. Around here we have wild raspberries and grapes. They look so different I had to taste them to be sure and even then they taste different. The grapes are extremely acidic and taste awful (but make great wine :-)

Remember that by definition we only eat the edible fruits!!! Most plants bear some kind of fruit and most of them are inedible to humans.

Re: Antioxidants and Cancer: Have we got it Backwards?

#29

Post by billswift »

hs wrote: post #25

no discussion about cancer is complete without mentioning "the china study" by Collin Campbell conclusion? eat whole food, plant-based diet and we don't need labels like vegetarian/vegan. why? because eating fried fries, potatoe chips, smoking, drinking, sodas, candies ... while correctly not including animals ... are not healthy

That's sort of like saying no discussion of physics is complete without mentioning the latest article about how physics suppresses perpetual-motion researchers.
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