We’ve had a year-end avalanche of learned reports bringing many folks holiday cheer – about how some common foods and eating habits can reduce the risk of some cancers and heart disease. Today, more good news: Increased fibre fights deadly digestive diseases…
Fibre-rich fresh foods… Which we should all be eating more of!
In fact the fibre recommendation is just one of three main findings from reports on two new studies by a team from Flinders University (Australia)…
Suspicions confirms
The big news from down-under is that associations between certain foods and major health scourges that were in the ‘suspected’ category’ have not been confirmed. There’s nothing there that hasn’t been talked about up, down a sideways previously – but those suspicions have now been confimed by objective quantitative experimentation.
What they did
Extensive and detailed data-mining studies were undertaken to determine what if any correspondences might exist between a variety of serious diseases and common food choices or dietary practices.
After much number crunching researchers say they’ve recovered hard evidence of a few fundamental, important associations.
What they found
“We’ve identified many direct links between poor diet choices and digestive cancers,” says senior study report author Dr. Yohannes Melaku . “Importantly, we found that a diet high in healthy fats and vegetables whilst limiting the consumption of sugars and alcohol could potentially reduce the risk of bowel and other cancers.”
“Unhealthy dietary patterns, marked by high consumption of red and processed meats, fast foods, refined grains, alcohol and sugary beverages, present a worrying relationship with an increased risk of GI cancers,” he adds.
“[M]ore work needs to be done with a greater focus on nutrition in clinical settings using nutritional biomarkers to better understand the relationship between diet and GI cancer,” says Associate Professor Amy Reynolds, a co-author on the paper. “We need to understand how different dietary patterns may influence the risk of developing digestive cancers.
“We also want to see an increase in education around healthy eating which could lead to better health outcomes for those at risk for GI cancers,” she adds.
The takeaway
“Notably, we found that high-fibre foods such as fruits and vegetables promote healthy gut bacteria that can reduce inflammation,” Melaku asserts. “The emphasis on fibre and healthy fats (see photo, top of page) should be an integral part of everyone’s diet.”
My take
An an abstract of the study report also confirms, the findings support the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) and American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR) guidelines that advocate for diets rich in whole grains, vegetables, fruits, and legumes, while limiting red and processed meat, sugary drinks and processed foods.
What more proof do you need? We all need to get of our duffs and commit to some significant changes in our food choices and dietary habits to do our part to reduce the epidemic of preventable diseases that’s ravaging a majority of the world’s population as we speak!
The truth is, we can all commit to at least some change in our unhealthy eating habits, no matter tight our food budgets are. All we have to do is redirect the money we spend on unhealthy junk and processed foods toward healthier, high-fibre fresh foods. And let take her inexorable and majestic course…
~ Maggie J.