Diet can reduce bowel cancer risk: study
A new study has found a way to dramatically reduce the risk of developing bowel cancer resulting from eating too much red meat.
Two years after being diagnosed with bowel cancer, Stephanie Bansemer-Brown is a picture of health, partly due to changes to changes in her diet.
“I lived on a farm, I ate a lot of red meat, I ate a lot of processed foods and I've now changed my diet,” she said.
Stephanie now includes far more fibre and wholegrains in her diet, two foods with starch which research has found can help offset the cancer risk resulting from eating too much red meat.
During a study, researchers fed healthy people a diet high in red meat for four weeks.
At the end of the study, they were found to have a 30 per cent increase in the molecules that cause cancer.
Researchers found that resistant starch was shown to be protective against collerectal cancer risk.
People who had the high resistant-starch diet, in addition to the red meat, cancer-causing molecules were reduced to baseline levels.
Bowel cancer is the second most common cancer in both men and women, after lung cancer.
Almost 15,000 new cases are diagnosed every year and almost 4000 people will die from the disease.
The risk of being diagnosed with bowel cancer is one in 10 for men, and one in 15 for women.
Australians can reduce their risk of bowel cancer by eating small portions of fresh red meat and avoiding processed meats such as sausages salami and bacon, which are high in fat, salt and nitrates.
If you have any concerns, visit the Bowel Cancer Australia website.
