[ad_1]
Led by Julia Baudry, an epidemiologist at the National Institute of Health and Medical Research in France, a team of researchers looked at the diets of 68,946 French adults. More than three-quarters of the volunteers were women, in their mid-40s on average. These volunteers have been described in a number of other ways, such as meat and fish, ready-to-eat meals, vegetable oils and condiments, dietary supplements and other products.
Follow-up time varied for each participant but lasted more than four years, and during that time, the total number of cancer studies was 1.340. The most prevalent was breast cancer (459) followed by prostate cancer (180), skin cancer (135), colorectal cancer (99), and non-Hodgkin lymphomas (47).
Comparing the participants' organic food scores with cancer cases, the researchers calculated a negative relationship between high scores (eating the most organic food) and overall cancer risk. Those who have most organic food have been 25% less likely to develop cancer. Specifically, they were 73% less likely to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma and 21% less likely to develop post-menopausal breast cancer.
Even participants who ate low-to-medium quality diets yet with a reduced risk of cancer, the authors found.
The authors theorize "possible explanation" for the negative relationship between organic food and cancer risk stems from the "significant" reduction of contamination that occurs when organic foods.
"If the findings are confirmed," "Baudry and her colleagues concluded.
Most people who are not employed in agriculture are exposed to pesticide residues through food, said Chavarro, who was not involved in the study.
However, Chavarro added that future researchers should be aware of certain limitations in this new study.
Drawbacks of the study
"Assessing intake of diet is difficult, assessing intake of organic foods is notoriously difficult," said Chavarro. "Even if the authors had access to information about organic foods, they considered all non-consumers of organic foods the same. "
For example, people who may be in a position to be in a position to have a poor attitude towards their health in general and that would likely influence the results.
Chavarro also says that it is unclear that quantifying organic food consumption is really calculating what the study wants to measure – reduced exposure to pesticide residues through diet.
"At the current stage of research, the relationship between organic food consumption and cancer risk is still unclear," Chavarro and his co-authors wrote in the commentary.
In the end, the study's takeaway, according to Chavarro, is that we should all be paying more attention to how much organic food we eat and "we should probably be studying this more."
Source link
