Science News Roundup:
The Obesity Issue
Taking Action for Cancer Prevention
With a new report showing Americans’ girth continuing to expand at an alarming rate in both children and adults (see below), an AICR comprehensive report provides one major reason individuals should stay a healthy weight: cancer prevention.
| Cancer Site | % Preventable by maintaining a healthy weight alone |
|---|---|
| Esophageal | 35% |
| Pancreas | 28% |
| Gallbladder | 21% |
| Colorectum | 9% |
| Breast | 17% |
| Endometrium | 49% |
| Kidney | 24% |
| Total | 19% (female) 20% (male) |
The report, Policy and Action for Cancer Prevention, estimates that Americans can prevent about 20 percent of seven common cancers by simply staying a healthy weight. (See chart.) For example, staying a healthy weight may prevent almost half of endometrial cancers, a common cancer in American women.
Add a healthy diet and physical activity to weight control, and Americans can prevent about a third of some of the most common cancers (see below). Lower income countries can prevent about a quarter of these same cancers. For example, approximately 45 percent of colon cancer cases and 38 percent of breast cancer cases in the United States are preventable through improved diet and physical activity patterns and by avoiding overweight and obesity. Twenty-four percent of kidney cancer is preventable by avoiding overweight and obesity alone.
Policy and Action for Cancer Prevention is a follow-up to AICR’s 2007 expert report. "From the 2007 expert report we know why the recommendations on diet, physical activity, and weight management are so important to cancer prevention,” says AICR’s Director of Research Susan Higginbotham, PhD, RD.
The policy report sets out recommendations for all groups of society – from federal government and schools to employers and individuals – to reduce the number of cancer cases. It also highlights the changes in behavior that have been shown to reduce cancer risk, and provides evidence-based suggestions for effecting these changes across every level of society.
“[This report] reinforces the point that many cancers, as with other chronic diseases, are preventable through the choices we make.”
The report also includes preventability estimates for the United Kingdom (another high-income country), as well as for China and Brazil, which represent low and middle-income countries respectively. The estimates do not account for additional cancers that could be prevented by smoking cessation; smoking alone accounts for about a third of cancers worldwide.
What’s unique about this report is it shows that when it comes to cancer prevention, there’s something we all can do both as individuals and as members of communities and society, said Dr. Higginbotham. And it reinforces the point that many cancers, as with other chronic diseases, are preventable through the choices we make.
Related Links:
- AICR’s Policy and Action for Cancer Prevention
- AICR’s Staying Lean for Cancer Prevention – free brochure
- F as in Fat: How Obesity Policies are Failing in America
News Break
Receipts collected from over 7,500 lunch-goers at fast-food chains showed that the average lunch purchase was 827 calories, with over a third of the purchases over 1,000 calories, reports a new study published in Obesity.
Science Roundup
States of Fat
State by state, American youths and adults are increasingly joining the ranks of the obese, according to a report released last week by the Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Adult obesity rates increased in 23 states and did not decrease in a single state in the past year. And in an alarming finding, the percentage of obese or overweight children is at or above 30 percent in 30 states.
Only one state had an obesity rate less than 20 percent – Colorado – and that checked in at 18.9 percent. Eight of the ten most obese states are in the south, where obesity –related diseases, such as diabetes, also remains the highest, the report states. The findings show a marked contrast to 1991 data, which showed that no state had an obesity rate above 20 percent.
Want to see where your state ranks in adult and youth overweight and obesity?
The report, F as in Fat: How Obesity Policies are Failing in America, stresses the need and makes recommendations for obesity prevention and reduction to become a national priority.
Love then Obesity
First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes... weight gain? So finds a new study, released in this month’s Obesity,
showing that only one to two years after couples marry or live together, they are more than twice as likely to become obese as their single counterparts.
In the study, researchers gathered data from a health study tracking approximately 7,000 adolescents into their late 20s, and then included information from the individuals’ romantic partners.
For women, after one year of living with that special someone their chances of obesity increased by 63 percent and it doubled after marriage. Men’s weight did not change much after that first year of living together but when men start living with their partner for up to two years, they were also twice as likely to become obese compared to single men.
Couples that live together – married or not – take on the same dietary and activity habits, note the authors. This may explain why the study found that couples who lived together longer were more likely to have similar obesity levels. Given that couples can influence one another in behaviors that increase obesity, (large portions, more calories, and little activity), there is also an opportunity for partners to influence their romantic significant others with healthy lifestyle behaviors, note the authors.
How Sweet It is -- Depends on Your Ethnicity
If European desserts seem a little on the tart side, a new genetic study showing that Europeans are among the most sugar-sensitive people in the world may explain why. Worldwide, people living in northern latitudes carry these genetic variations that allow them to detect sugar far more than populations in tropical regions. This may help researchers explain differences in worldwide obesity.
In the study, published in Current Biology,
researchers presented 144 unrelated Europeans, Asians and Africans with nine varying concentrations of sugar-water drinks. Participants rated the drinks from most to least sweet, and researchers correlated the sweetness-score for each individual with two sugar-sensing genes.
To the surprise of the researchers, instead of finding a link to the genes themselves, the scientists found there were variations lying just outside one of the genes that predicted participants’ sensitivity to sugar. These variations likely determine the activity of the sugar-sensing gene, the authors hypothesize.
The sugar-sensing variations may have evolved at a time when the most common source of energy was sugar-sweet plants, which grew mainly in tropical environments, the authors suggest. Populations in colder climates adapted so that they too, could taste energy-rich carbohydrates in plants.
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