A new study has linked high dietary fibre with a reduced risk of breast cancer. The study of over 90,000 women compared the incidence of breast cancer in those who had diets high in fibrous foods (such as potatoes) with those who consumed less.

The risk of breast cancer was 12%-19% lower in young women with higher fibre diets. High intake during adolescence was also associated with 24% lower risk of breast cancer before menopause. Among all the women, the relationship between fibre intake and breast cancer risk reduction was the same: the greater the intake, the greater the reduction in breast cancer risk. Fibre from vegetable and fruit sources had the most obvious benefits.

The reasons for this effect are not yet completely understood but the study authors have suggested that fibre-rich foods reduce oestrogen levels and high oestrogen levels are associated with breast cancer development.

Women from the African and African-Caribbean community have already been noted to have poorer outcomes in relation to breast cancer when compared to white women.  It has also been reported that Black women tend to develop breast cancer earlier. Increasing dietary fibre certainly appears to be another weapon in the fight against breast cancer.

You can read more about this study here.

An interesting new study has linked sweet drinks with body fat. The study has shown that drinking sugary drinks (such as coke) every day increases a type of body fat known as visceral fat. This type of fat surrounds particular organs in our bodies such as the pancreas and the liver. Visceral fat is important because it is linked to the development of type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

The study of a 1,003 people(average age of 45 years) compared the effects of sugary soda with diet soda drinks on visceral fat. The participants completed questionnaires about their food and drink consumption andbody fat levels were recorded using CT scans.  The participants were followed up over a period of 6 years and the authors found that those who drank sugary soda most frequently (daily) had the highest levels of visceral fat. However, there was no change in visceral fat levels in those who drank diet soda drinks.

People of African and African-Caribbean descent (and other ethnic minorities) have an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Reducing the drinking frequency or finding alternatives to these drinks may help to reduce the risk of these conditions.

You can read more about this report here and here.

A recently published study has thrown new light on the links between dietary sugar and breast cancer. The study authors investigated the effect of different types of diets on the development of tumours in mice. The authors found that just 30% of mice on a starch-based diet had measurable tumours, whereas 50 to 58 percent of the mice on sucrose-enriched diets had developed mammary or breast tumours. The study also showed that numbers of lung metastases (secondary cancer growths) were significantly higher in mice on sucrose- or a fructose-enriched diet, when compared with mice on a starch -based diet.  This implies that sucrose and fructose have the ability to promote tumour growth through specific pathways.

 Although it’s difficult to compare mice with humans,  the mice in this study received amounts of sugar (relative to their size) that were similar to amounts found in western diets. This raises questions about the presence of sugar in the western diet and its influence on breast cancer. The diets of people of African and African-Caribbean descent are often high in sugar. It is also the case that young UK based Black women (under the age of 40) have poorer outcomes in relation to breast cancer when compared with their non-black counterparts.  Further research into the effects of dietary sugar on breast cancer in humans (particularly young Black women) is certainly warranted.

You can find more information about the studies here , here and here.

This week, an article in the Daily Record encourages everyone to take a look at the Japanese diet and lifestyle if we are serious about improving the health and wellbeing of our families. They stated that The Lancet has found that Japanese children are the healthiest in the world and this is down to their lifestyle.

The article highlights a new book by husband and wife team William Doyle and Naomi Moriyama, Secrets of the World’s Healthiest Children. This book is based on Doyle and Moriyama’s research into why Japan is the world leader when it comes to health. The key reasons why this is so include:

–          The Japanese eat foods high in nutrients, including fruit, vegetables and whole grains.
–          They don’t rely on processed foods
–           The Japanese only consume sugar or salt in small quantities
–          Meat is usually treated as a garnish or side dish rather than the main part of any meal
–          The Japanese eat moderately, they serve only moderate sized portions of food
–          The Japanese are physically active

Let’s follow Japan’s example and adopt some of their habits to ensure that we too can enjoy good health.

The Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) has found that unhealthy eating contributes to more deaths globally than any other factor. This is because unhealthy eating plays a role in increasing risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes.  They also found that high blood pressure was another big cause of premature death across the world.

The IHME’s conclusions are based on data from 108 countries from 1990 to 2013.

This study is very important as it adds to the evidence base that shows the extent to which our diet affects our health and wellbeing. It also shows that we can significantly improve our health by making very simple changes to our lifestyle.

The British Medical Association (BMA) has recently published a report entitled Food for Thought which aims to provide recommendations on how to promote a healthy diet among children and young people. The report was conducted in recognition of doctors’ increasing concern about the impact of poor diet on the UK’s health with high levels of ill health and premature mortality which all significantly drain the NHS’s resources. The BMA’s report recommends the following:

Overall approach to diet-related ill health

• A strong regulatory framework should be central to the approach to reducing the burden of diet-related ill health in the UK, focused on interventions that limit commercial influences on people’s dietary behaviour and encourage healthy dietary patterns.

Improving attitudes and knowledge

• High-impact and sustained social marketing campaigns should be used to improve attitudes and knowledge about healthy dietary behaviour and the health risks of a poor diet.
• Local authorities should work with schools to achieve the wider implementation of the whole-school approach for promoting healthier diets throughout the UK.
• There should be adequate resources to support all healthcare professionals in addressing dietary behaviour where possible and clinically appropriate.

Restrictions on mass media advertising and other marketing communications

• Regulations should be developed to prohibit the marketing of unhealthy food and drink products to children and young people.
• The marketing of unhealthy food and drink products in schools should be prohibited.

Regulating industry practices and changing the retail environment

• The UK health departments should commission a review of how the regulation of sales promotions can be strengthened to ensure they favour healthy options and deliver public health benefits.
• Regulations should be developed that prohibit retailers from displaying and promoting unhealthy food and drink products at checkouts and in queuing areas.

The physical availability of unhealthy and healthy products

• Local authorities should be provided with the power to restrict the future number, clustering and concentration of fast-food outlets locally.

Food in schools

• Legislation should be introduced in England to ensure that mandatory school food standards apply to all academy schools and free schools.
• A free fruit and vegetable scheme should be available to all primary school children throughout the UK five days per week.
• Consideration should be given to extending the provision of free school meals in Northern Ireland and Wales to be universal rather than based on entitlement.

Hospital food standards

• The UK health departments should work together to develop and implement consistent and comprehensive hospital food standards, which should be introduced as a statutory requirement.

Other food available in the hospital environment

• The sale of all unhealthy food and drink products should be phased out in all NHS hospitals, supported by the development and implementation of UK-wide mandatory regulations.

Food standards in social care setting

• Nutritional standards should be developed and implemented for the provision of food in all care homes in the UK, and should be a statutory requirement.

Regulating the nutritional content of processed food and drink products

• A one-year target should be set for manufacturers, retailers and caterers to not produce or sell any food and drink products containing artificial trans fats in the UK.
• All manufacturers, retailers and caterers should prioritise action to systematically reduce salt levels in all food and drink products sold and produced in the UK.
• UK-wide targets, to be achieved by 2020, should be set for manufacturers, retailers and caterers to reduce calorie, fat, saturated fat and added sugar levels for certain product categories

Fiscal measures that favour healthy diets

• A tax should be introduced on all sugar-sweetened beverages, which increases the price by at least 20%.
• Consideration should be given to the introduction of fiscal measures to subsidise the sale of fruit and vegetables.

International cooperation on nutrition

• The UK Government should lobby for, and support the World Health Organization in developing and implementing an international treaty on food and nutrition in the form of a Framework Convention on Healthy Nutrition.

The BMA recognises that these recommendations will not sit well with the government strategy of working with the food industry and this is where organisations like The Lake Foundation can make a difference as we aim to work in the best interest of the public. We support these recommendations as they recognise the importance of making healthy eating more affordable and accessible whilst making unhealthy food less affordable and accessible. We believe this is very important as the black community is disproportionately affected by diet-related diseases such as diabetes and high blood, and thus these recommendations, if implemented, would be of great benefit to our community.

You can download the BMA’s complete report below.

A study published in the journal Circulation has estimated the number of global deaths per year that are associated with sugar sweetened drinks, what diseases sugar sweetened deaths are linked to  and where in the world these deaths are occurring. They estimated that 184,000 deaths per year are associated with the consuming sugar sweetened drinks and when they broke these numbers down by disease area most of the sugar sweetened drink deaths were associated with diabetes  (133,000 death per year).  Cardiovascular disease was associated with 45,000 of these deaths and cancers 6,450.

The study also found that the majority of sugar sweetened drink deaths occur in middle income countries  (71%) whilst 24% of these deaths occur in high income countries and 5% in low income countries.

This is a very important study as it yet again provides more evidence of the effect of sugar on our health. It shows of the clear need for all of us to reduce our sugar consumption and this is particularly important for the black community who are 3 times more likely to have diabetes and therefore are more  likely to be affected by sugar sweetened drink death.

An interesting two-week diet swap experiment has been carried out by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh showing the damage a Western diet can cause to our gut. This study recruited  20 volunteers from the USA and 20 from rural Africa and each group was asked to switch diets for two weeks. The African group were asked to eat more junk food (burgers and fries) whilst the American volunteers were asked to eat a low-fat, high-fibre diet. Even though the study was quite a short one the impact of the diet swap was quite significant with the American group showing less bowel inflammation while the African volunteer’s bowel health declined.

This was an interesting study demonstrating the power of our diet in affecting our health, and in this case our gut health and our  risk of developing bowel (colon) cancer with Dr Stephen O’Keefe, from the University of Pittsburgh, saying:

“In just two weeks, a change in diet from a Westernised composition to a traditional African high-fibre, low-fat diet reduced these biomarkers of cancer risk, indicating that it is likely never too late to modify the risk of colon cancer.”