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A consumer survey in France concluded that those who bring organic products to their table suffer less from cancer. The debate is reborn, because for other scientists, it is "impossible to prove categorically" this relationship.
A large study published this week showed that the largest consumers of organic foods in France were developing fewer cancers than those who had never eaten them illustrate the difficulty of establishing a cause-and-effect relationship between food and health.
It is impossible to categorically prove in the laboratory that this or that food reduces the risk of a disease as complex as cancer.
Researchers should monitor a large number of people for a period of time and determine which of them are developing cancer, in the hope of eventually documenting specific behavior of those who become ill.
Thousands of studies on food and various diseases have been conducted for decades. Even the biggest ones are sometimes questioned, like the famous work that showed in 2013 the beneficial effects of the Mediterranean diet against heart disease and the fact that this year has been removed from a prestigious medical journal due to problems methodological.
In 2014, only one large study evaluated its effects on cancer, the Million Women Study, conducted among 600,000 Britons in 2014.
No differences were found between consumers and non-users . in terms of overall cancer risk, but has seen a reduction in cancer risk in particular: non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
The new French study, in which participated among others the University of Sorbonne, the National Institute of Agricultural Research and the National Institute of Health and Medical Research, is more detailed, although it has fewer participants, about 69,000, mostly women.
Their results were published Monday in the Jama American magazine.
The hypothesis is that consumers of organic products ingest less synthetic pesticides in fruits, vegetables and grains, thus reducing their risk, while some pesticides are suspected to be carcinogens.
After their inclusion, volunteers in the NutriNet-Santé study completed a questionnaire (income, physical activity, smoking or non-smoking, body mbad index, etc.) and reported having consumed organic foods in the last 24 months. hours.
The study divided participants into four groups based on the type of ingested organic food. Then, the number of cancer cases in each group was counted in four and a half years on average.
Of a quarter of those who reported eating a majority of organic foods, the risk of cancer was 25% lower than in the fourth part, which never consumed them. In absolute terms, the increase is only 0.6 percentage points, or six additional patients per 1,000 people.
– "Complex" –
The study found a statistically significant correlation only for bad cancer in postmenopausal women and for lymphoma, including non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
The authors were concerned with correcting their results by taking into account that consumers of organic products were on average richer, less obese and less smokers.
But other invisible, environmental or lifestyle factors can also have an impact. This is the typical problem of these studies.
"People who deliberately consume organic products, to the point of declaring them, are probably different from others in many other ways," says Nigel Brockton, director of research at the US Research Institute. against cancer (AFP). AICR).
This expert recommends, instead of a particular type of food, a set of practices to reduce the risk of cancer: normal weight, physical activity, healthy diet, without too much red meat … [19659003"Dietisacomplexthing"hesays"Wewouldnevermakearecommendationbasedonasinglestudyevenifitisstatisticallysignificant"headds
Other aspects of the study were also questioned: pesticide traces were not measured in the participants, which prompted criticism from experts of Harvard in the same issue of Jama. Co-author Julia Baudry told AFP that this was only done in a small subsample.
The declarative aspect of the study also poses a problem to John Ioannidis, professor emeritus of medicine at Stanford, known to have claimed that most of the published studies were untrue.
"Most people, including myself, can not say exactly how much organic food they eat," he told AFP. "The study has a 3% chance of finding something important and 97% spreading absurd and ridiculous results."
As in the case of the consumption of red meat or cigarettes, many other studies will be needed in the same direction to conclude on the effect of organic food.
The American Cancer Society continues to advocate the consumption of fruits and vegetables, organic or otherwise.
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