Source: CNN
You can protect yourself from cancer by eating organic, a new study suggests. Those who frequently eat organic foods lowered their overall risk of developing cancer, a study published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine finds. Specifically, those who primarily eat organic foods were more likely to ward off non-Hodgkin lymphoma and postmenopausal breast cancer compared to those who rarely or never ate organic foods.
Led by Julia Baudry, an epidemiologist at Institut National de la Sante et de la Recherche Medicale in France, a team of researchers looked at the diets of 68,946 French adults. More than three-quarters of the volunteers were women, in their mid-40s on average. These volunteers were categorized into four groups depending on how often they reported eating 16 organic products, including fruits and vegetables, meat and fish, ready-to-eat meals, vegetable oils and condiments, dietary supplements and other products.
Follow-up time varied for each participant but lasted slightly more than four and a half years on average, and during that time, the study volunteers developed a total of 1,340 cancers. The most prevalent was breast cancer (459) followed by prostate cancer (180), skin cancer (135), colorectal cancer (99), and non-Hodgkin lymphomas (47).
The Authors Calculated Cancer Risk
Comparing the participants’ organic food scores with cancer cases, the researchers calculated a negative relationship between high scores (eating the most organic food) and overall cancer risk. Those who ate the most organic food were 25% less likely to develop cancer. Specifically, they were 73% less likely to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma and 21% less likely to develop post-menopausal breast cancer.
Even participants who ate low-to-medium quality diets yet stuck with organic food experienced a reduced risk of cancer, the authors found. The authors theorize a “possible explanation” for the negative relationship between organic food and cancer risk stems from the “significant” reduction of contamination that occurs when conventional foods are replaced by organic foods.
“If the findings are confirmed, promoting organic food consumption in the general population could be a promising preventive strategy against cancer,” Baudry and her colleagues concluded.
Dr. Jorge E. Chavarro, an associate professor in the Department of Nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said in a podcast that the new study is “incredibly important.” He co-authored a commentary published with the study.
Most people who are not employed in agriculture are exposed to pesticide residues through food, said Chavarro, who was not involved in the study.
The new findings are consistent with those of the International Agency for Research in Cancer, which found pesticides are cancer causing in humans, noted Chavarro. They also align with those of another study that showed a negative relationship between eating organic food and non-Hodgkin lymphoma, he said.
Read the full article here: https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/22/health/organic-food-cancer-study/index.html
