How drinking red wine with your steak cancels out cancer causing effects of red meat

It is the perfect excuse to enjoy a glass of red wine with your Sunday roast.

Scientists have shown that the drink cancels out some harmful substances produced by the meat in the stomach.

The chemicals - released during the digestion of fat - are linked to a host of ills, including cancer, hardening of the arteries, diabetes and Parkinson's disease. It is thought the stomach acts as a 'bioreactor' in which red wine's health benefits neutralise some of the dangers of the meat. The Israeli research is far from the first to extol the health benefits of red wine, with previous studies crediting it with reducing the risk of heart disease and cancer.

But the study at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem was unusual in that it looked at the effect of wine in combination with a specific food. Researchers used two groups of rats, feeding one straight red meat, and the other meat impregnated with red wine extract.

Source - Daily Mail

Eating too much red meat 'is bad for the heart'

People who eat two or more servings of red meat a day are much more likely to develop conditions leading to heart disease and diabetes, U.S. researchers have found.

They found eating lots of red meat increased a person's risk of suffering from a cluster of risk factors known as metabolic syndrome by 25 per cent compared to those who had only two servings of meat a week, the researchers reported in the journal Circulation.

The symptoms of metabolic syndrome include excessive fat around the waist, high cholesterol, high blood sugar and high blood pressure.

The study also found that diet soda consumption was linked to these elevated risk factors for heart disease and diabetes, echoing the findings of a study published in July.

"When we found that diet soda promoted risk we were surprised," said Dr Lyn Steffen, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Minnesota.

Source - Daily Mail

Red meat 'can raise the risk of cancer by 25 per cent'

Eating large amounts of red and processed meat leaves you at greater risk of cancer, a major report has warned.

One in ten cases of both lung and bowel cancer could be prevented if people cut down on beef, lamb, pork, sausages, ham and bacon, scientists say. Red meat also increases the risk of cancers of the liver and oesophagus, the study found. The research, involving nearly 500,000 people, adds to growing evidence that too much meat in the diet can be deadly. Health experts are increasingly concerned at the role of diet - particularly meat - in cancers.

Last month, a report from the World Cancer Research Fund warned that red meat was a major contributor to the disease. Its scientists urged people to stop eating processed bacon, ham and sausages and consume no more than the equivalent of three 6oz steaks a week.

The latest findings, published today in the science journal PLoS Medicine, reach a similar conclusion.

Researchers at the U.S. National Cancer Institute looked at the records of 494,000 people aged 50 to 71 taking part in an extensive diet and health study. Volunteers filled in detailed questionnaires about their dietary habits over the previous year. That allowed the scientists to work out what proportion of their calories came from red and processed meat.

The researchers then looked at the medical histories of the 20 per cent of volunteers eating the most meat, with the 20 per cent eating the least.

The biggest red meat eaters were 25 per cent more likely to be diagnosed with bowel cancer during the eight-year study, and 20 per cent more likely to develop lung cancer. For processed meat, the increased risk was 20 per cent and 16 per cent respectively.

Source - Daily Mail

Warning: scientists' advice about diet can be a recipe for confusion

Everyone tires, sooner or later, of being told what to do, especially when the advice is confusing, conflicting or plain contradictory. Nowhere is that more evident than in the area of diet.

The response to this week's report from the World Cancer Research Fund, the largest review of the link between diet and cancer which distilled the findings of more than 7,000 studies, was predictable. It concluded that a third of cancers were attributable to diet – something scientists have been saying for the past 25 years – and warned of the dangers of being overweight, where evidence of its role in at least six cancers is stronger than ever.

But what really stirred the passions of red-blooded Englishmen was its verdict on meat.

Consumption of red meat – beef, lamb, pork – should be cut to 500g a week and processed meats – bacon, sausage, salami, ham and other staples from the delicatessen – should be avoided altogether, it ruled.

"Save our bacon" trumpeted one front page the next day while others asked querulously "So what is safe to eat?" It was an understandable response. We have come to accept the idea that smoking causes lung cancer and that cigarettes kill. But who has ever suggested that a favourite uncle died because of his love of roast beef?

This is the crux of the problem. The link between smoking and lung cancer is crystal clear – cigarettes account for almost 90 per cent of deaths from lung cancer. If there were no smoking there would be almost no lung cancer.

Nothing in our diets has anywhere near this impact on our health. With lesser causes such as red and processed meats, other mitigating factors play a greater role – genetic inheritance, exercise, other elements in the diet. And while cigarettes have only negative effects, most foods have a mix of positive and negative effects – sugar, for example, is good for energy but rots the teeth. The message on diet is therefore necessarily complex – there is no magic bullet as there is with lung cancer (stop smoking).

Take the world's most widely used superfood, tea. It is drunk by millions, not because it is healthy but because it is soothing, thirst quenching and delicious.Recent research has shown that it is high in antioxidants and may protect against heart disease and cancer.
But adding milk and, worse, sugar, may negate its health-giving benefits. For people who drink a lot of tea the dash of milk in each cup adds up and can contribute significantly to the amount of fat in the diet, increasing the risk of heart disease and cancelling the protective effect of the antioxidants. Tea can be good or bad for you, depending on how it is drunk.

Source - Independent

Consumers ignore cancer risks of eating red meat

There's nothing like a bacon sarnie with brown sauce," says 36-year-old Nicola Doran as she waits in the queue at JBS butchers in east London.

Ms Doran's sentiments have been echoed across the country by meat enthusiasts who are turning a blind eye to the latest announcement from the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF), which states that bacon is such a cancer risk it should be avoided entirely. The mother-of-two said: "It wouldn't put me off eating pork or bacon. I'm Irish, and people in Ireland were born and bred on pork; it's their number one meat and it never did them any harm."

It is business as usual in the Tower Hamlets butchers, providers of meat to the east London community for the past 30 years. John Gaynor, manager of JBS, is convinced that shoppers will not take the latest scare over the relationship between meat consumption and cancer seriously.

"People have been eating pork for donkey's years," he said, standing behind a display of gammon, pork chops and ribs. "Cancer will either get you or it won't. People wouldn't eat anything if they listened to the news all the time."

Despite the WCRF warning on the dangers of processed meat, butchers and meat-lovers have remained optimistic. The study, which used analysis from 7,000 cancer studies from around the world, said that food such as salami, ham and bacon was such a risk factor for bowel cancer that it should be cut completely from our diets.

Lynn Church, a 46-year-old artist who has been going to JBS butchers for years, said that cutting out bacon completely seemed excessive. "You should have everything in moderation. Some of the things the media say might put me off but basically everything's OK in moderation."

The WCRF study also suggested a link between red-meat consumption and bowel cancer, and recommended that people should cut back their intake to 500g a week.

Source - Independent