Now Sugar Causes Cancer?

Eating healthy gets more and more difficult with so many warnings to heed.  Every other day someone is telling us that some other food may cause cancer.  Alternatively, we often find that the ones we were warned about last year are either less dangerous or actually good for us.

This report from the PBS News Hour is a good example.  “Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco, said they have uncovered documents demonstrating that members of the sugar industry called off a study, named Project 259, in the 1960s because it linked sucrose – a common sugar – to heart disease and bladder cancer in preliminary experiments.” 

Several questions spring to mind.  Is the science from 50 years ago as good as the science of today?  Is calling off a study that same as confirming that the unfavorable findings are true?  What was the objective of this Project 259 that they happened to stumble upon these findings – surely the sugar industry didn’t say, “Look into the health benefits of our product, but if you find anything scary, stop!”  Does PBS not understand that linked to is not the same as causes?  And, what are these scientists doing poking around into documents from studies done in the 1960s other than trying to stir things up and make headlines?  Finally, haven't we been told over and over that it's artificial sweeteners, like aspartame, not sugar, that supposedly cause cancer?

Back in the 1960s they were denying that sugar was the cause of obesity, pinning the blame instead on fat.  It took scientists and the government over 50 years to get that straight and still some want to argue.

A more recent source from a couple of years ago brings this sugar/cancer issue up to date:  “It’s true that sugar feeds every cell in our body – even cancer cells. But, research shows that eating sugar doesn’t necessarily lead to cancer. It’s what sugar does to your waistline that can lead to cancer.”

How do we keep these conflicting and confusing stories straight?  Another source provides some helpful information.

In 2013 the American Society for Nutrition reviewed 264 studies on cancer risk for “50 common ingredients from random recipes in a cookbook.”  They found at least one paper reporting a cancer risk for forty of those fifty ingredients.  In total, “191 (72%) of the studies concluded that the tested food was associated with an increased (n = 103) or a decreased (n = 88) risk.  It seems that if you look hard enough, you can find a study that confirms what you want to believe about the dangers or benefits of almost any food.

The conclusion of this wide-ranging review confirms that notion.  “Associations with cancer risk or benefits have been claimed for most food ingredients. Many single studies highlight implausibly large effects, even though evidence is weak.”

One writer put it into perspective with this comment:  “Perhaps the best example is processed red meat, which the WHO thinks will raise your relative risk of cancer by 18 percent. That sounds scary. That's still debatable, but even if it's true, then it would mean that if I declared today that I would eat an extra three pieces of bacon every day for the next 30 years, my absolute risk of colon cancer might go from 2.7 percent to 3.2 percent. That's… not that scary. And I'm not going to eat that much bacon, so it's likely much less.”

So, there we have it.  If sugar causes cancer, it’s in some good company.  It’s always important to put these reports in perspective, never counting on the news media to do it for us.  (But do take it easy on the Christmas cookies.)