Everything we eat both causes and prevents cancer \ stacker news ~science

Everything we eat both causes and prevents cancer

632 sats \ 7 comments \ @zuspotirko 24 May science

https://www.vox.com/2015/3/23/8264355/research-study-hype

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 24 May

Heterogeneity's a real bitch

Nutrition science is just so unreliable it's impossible to get us monkeys to comply with any diet for more than a week. The best diet is simply "less". Eat what you want, in moderation, unless you have a specific medical condition (Diabetes, true Celiac etc)

Life is just too short to not enjoy food by not eating carbs/meat etc. Most dietary zealots are selling you something. I've seen way too many cases of people who do everything right- never did drugs/alcohol/smoke, ran marathons, no family history etc who ended up with a completely random cancer anyway or got hit by a bus and died.

Even with family history, your absolute risk for most individual cancer types is miniscule, so some study saying blueberries decreases your risk of studied cancer A by 33% is not impressive if you go from a whopping 1% to 0.66% and it actually increased your risk of unstudied cancer B by 50%

The best thing you can do to prevent cancer is not be too nice. Nice people always get the worst cancers, that's just a fact.

121 sats \ 1 reply \ @mrsu 25 May

"Everything in moderation" or "there are no bad foods" are nonsensical terms espoused by the food industry to justify eating their industrial sludge.

Random rare genetic cancers may not be preventable. But if you model your diet based on what humans evolved to eat, you'll be metabolically healthy. If you are metabolically healthy, you remove the risk of a whole plethora of health conditions including cancer.

Also, most nutritional studies are observational and based on weak data. Outcomes are often nothing better than random. We dont take nutritional advice from nutritionists.

3 sats \ 0 replies \ @gmd 25 May

Maybe... maybe not. But pasta tastes fucking good

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @south_korea_ln 24 May

Yeah, this highlights yet again the importance of meta-analyses (i.e. a study that takes all the available data from all the studies published on the topic in the past to reanalyze this data and obtain better statistical significance from it).

The author actually mentions this.

For my part, I've tried to report new studies in context, and use systematic reviews — meta-analyses of all the best studies on clinical questions — wherever possible. When scientists or other members of the media prematurely blow up a novel breakthrough, I've tried to convey the reality that it's probably not a breakthrough at all. The more I do this, the more I realize the truth in what Harvard's Oreskes, Stanford's John Ioannidis, and many other respected researchers have reiterated over the years: we need to look past the newest science to where knowledge has accumulated. There, we'll find insights that will help us have healthier lives and societies.

(emphasis mine)

Similarly, in particle physics people are very careful about anomalies in the data that might hint at a new particle. Only if the statistical significance is large enough (how many sigmas) will they report on it.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Coinsreporter 25 May

IMO cancer isn't caused due to food but it's there when your body can't heal itself.

Ayurveda is the solution, though very few people can adapt to ayurveda life

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Satosora 25 May

I thought the microplastics. were causing cancer?