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"Can you Really Lower your Chances of Getting Cancer by Eating a Healthy Diet?"


 

Can you really lower your chances of getting cancer by eating a healthy diet? "Yes, you can," say leading scientific experts who have carefully studied what causes cancer. They believe that many of the thousands of deaths caused by this disease each year could be prevented if we made sensible changes to our diets.

Sound nutrition has always been essential for staying healthy and living life to its fullest. In the past, that meant eating enough nourishing foods in order to avoid malnutrition and the vitamin and mineral "deficiency diseases" such as scurvy and rickets.

Today, we know that eating too much of certain foods can also have a powerful effect on our health and well-being, and we are learning that serious diseases, such as cancer and coronary heart disease, are caused in part by what we choose to eat each day.

Beginning in the 1950s, scientists discovered a link between diet and coronary heart disease, the nation's number one killer. Now, scientists are discovering that there is a relationship between diet and cancer, the nation's second leading cause of death. Some 23% of deaths in the UK are due to cancer and it is estimated that about a third of all cancer deaths are related to diet. Although rates of stomach cancer are declining for both men and women, lung and breast cancer is increasing among women, and in men rates for cancer of the prostate, colon and oesophagus are all increasing.

The scientific evidence that the food we eat can affect whether or not we develop cancer is growing steadily. In the United States the American National Academy of Sciences, an organisation of America's leading scientists, found this evidence so persuasive that in their landmark report of 1982, "Diet, Nutrition and Cancer," they urged Americans to begin changing their diets to increase their chances of avoiding cancer. These changes in diet have been supported by later reports from all over the world, including the European Community and the World Health Organisation itself.

Based on these reports, the World Cancer Research Fund has devised four simple dietary guidelines which could help people lower their risk of developing cancer.

The World Cancer Research Fund Dietary Guidelines to Lower Your Cancer Risk are :

1. Eat more vegetables, fruits, wholegrain bread and cereals.

2. Cut down the amount of fat in your diet, both saturated and unsaturated, from the current average of approximately 41% to a level of 30% of total calories.

3. Consume salt-cured, salt-pickled and smoked foods only in moderation.

4. Drink alcohol in moderation, if at all.

 

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Source : From Fast-Food Guide, Authored By Michael F. Jacobson and Sarah Fritschner

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