A friend linked this Times blog post today, and it made me seethe with rage. The headline is “Eating Vegetables Doesn’t Stop Cancer,” which seems reasonable enough. It’s based on a recent study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute which, unfortunately, reaches the opposite conclusion. The journalist is forced to admit, in the sixth paragraph, that there was a statistically significant reduction in risk – 1-4% for eating 200 grams/day above the average. Ok that’s small, but it’s still the exact opposite of what was in the headline and the first five paragraphs. How does she reconcile this? Unconvincingly:
While the findings suggest at least a small lower risk of cancer among those who eat lots of vegetables, the slight difference could be explained by a number of variables, like reporting errors among the study subjects or the fact that vegetable eaters also are less likely to smoke or drink to excess. In addition, a 4 percent reduction in relative risk offers very little practical benefit to an individual.
Of course, reporting errors could also cut the other way. I suspect people are much more likely to exaggerate the amount of fruit and vegetables that they eat, particularly those who eat relatively little.
There is news here, which is that the reduction is much lower than was previously hoped, as this editorial in the same journal makes clear. This point is totally absent from the Times post. My biggest problem would be that the overly reductive title implies that no fruit or vegetable confers any benefit against any cancer. There is a lot of evidence that some do, which they mention briefly at the end.
if you do have cancerous cells, fruits and veggies wont stop it…however i think it does reduce the risk of having such diseases if you dont have it in your bloodline
@JPL, one thing to remember is that reporters rarely write their own headlines and instead it’s some idiot editor trying to sell more copies (or get more clicks in this day and age).
@elsiedabney, everyone has cancerous cells. We all have ~10 trillion cells some of which will be cancerous from environmental effects, heredity, or even replication errors. The immune system keeps most in check and non-vascularization keeps the others from spreading. It’s just when you get a lot that you get “cancer”, and especially if they travel around the body (metastasize). The evidence is pretty clear that a meat heavy diet increases one’s risk for developing cancer.