Girls' consumption of french fries linked to breast cancer in adulthood

[leftchick]

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1124331701787

Aug. 18, 2005 20:34 | Updated Aug. 18, 2005 21:15
Girls' consumption of french fries linked to breast cancer in adulthood
By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH


Frequent consumption of french fries by girls aged three to five increases the risk of breast cancer once they grow up, while the consumption of whole milk at this age slightly decreases the risk, according to a report by researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Thursday's issue of the International Journal of Cancer.

The researchers conducted a case-control study involving 582 women who had breast cancer and 1,569 controls who did not. They were selected from among participants in two major Nurses Health Studies.

"These data suggest a possible association between diet before puberty and the subsequent risk of breast," they wrote, noting that information about the diets was obtained from the mothers of the participants with a 30-item food-frequency questionnaire.

"Differential recall of preschool diet by the mothers of cases and controls has to be considered as a possible explanation for the observed associations," they wrote. "Further studies are needed to evaluate whether the association between preschool diet and breast cancer is reproducible in prospective data not subject to recall bias," they added.

[musiclawyer]

1. Fries = acryllic

not really, but almost

[Shakespeare]

5. specifically, it's acrylamide

Any just about any starch-based food fried at a high temp (in a restaurant OR at home) will produce this chemical, which is a known carcinogen.

One more reason to stay away from that crap....

[Spinzonner]

2. Will you have a mastectomy voucher with that ?

(Irony intended, not offense)

[demigoddess]

3. they need to look into what is in the fat that they fry the fries in.

They put some awful stuff in our cows and in the fat that they get after slaughter. I advise every one to stick to olive oil.

[CatholicEdHead]

4. McDonalds uses Beef Tallow

(or at least used to) in their French Fries.

[Shakespeare]

6. Not anymore. Likely culprit is acrylamide.

See my other post...

[TrogL]

7. Where were they prepared

Some restaurants do NOT maintain their fry baskets or friers.

[OzarkDem]

8. Not a very reliable study

This study relied on mothers of girls who had to "recall" what kinds of diets their daughters ate in previous years and how much they ate. These kinds of studies aren't conclusive and are often subject to "recall bias".

I wouldn't put a whole lot of weight behind this study. It looks like much more research needs to be done. OTOH, the news media loves to report these studies - it attracts more readers than the better designed research studies.

[northzax]

9. I saw this on a morning show this am

and, too their credit, the Doctor talking about it said just that, more research needs doing, this is a very soft study.

[leftchick]

12. French Fries contain acrylamide a known carcinogen...

that is enough for me to keep them away from my children.


<snip>

French fries are well-known for the fact that they contain higher levels of a toxic chemical acrylamide, which is black-listed by the Department of Health and Human Services as reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen. The carcinogenesis of this chemical is well known in animals while it is unknown whether it causes cancer in humans.

Although French fries contain high levels of acrylamide, they are not the only foods that carry acrylamide. Many other processed foods such as potato chips, snack products, and cereals also produce high levels of acrylamide during a thermal process such as baking, roasting and frying.

[northzax]

14. everything is a carcinogen

if you work at it hard enough. Still, I prefer hard science, no one has even shown a causal connection between acrylamide and cancer in humans, let alone what doses are neccesary. And why breast cancer? wouldn't instestinal cancers be more likely, given that's where the acrylamide ends up? or liver cancer?

[Up2Late]

10. Why don't they just come out and say, "Living in the U.S. causes Cancer!"

Joe Jackson was Right!

(let's see who catches that reference)

[HysteryDiagnosis]

17. Your immune system kills cancer, take care of it and it will take

care of you.

[et]

11. Other indicators are more likely to link to cancer than fries ...

Recall bias is probably a relatively minor factor. More likely, what needs to be studied, is what these women ate throughout their lives (and their general health/lifestyle - smoking, etc.). It may turn out that little girls who are fed fries are more likely to have lifelong food/health issues that are totally unrelated to the fries and more related to lifestyle (eating too much fast food, not enough slow food).

[HockeyMom]

13. Genes

My Mom always made french fries when I was growing up back in the 50s. There wasn't any such thing as poly unsaturated oils back then. She used old fashioned CRISCO or LARD.

I also took the high dosage birth control pill for 15 years. I am in my middle 50s. I don't have breast cancer and no woman in my family ever has had breast cancer. Maybe THAT has more to do with it (GENES) than French Fries?

[KamaAina]

15. You mean, "freedom fries" might be bad for you?

(snarf)

[Writer]

16. Correlation but no causation

I hope this TRULY gets vetted by the scientific community.