Wholegrain breakfast helps fight colon cancer
The rates of colon cancer around the world bear out the theory that healthy eating, wholegrain diets and diets rich in vegetables and fruits reduce bowel cancer. In developing countries where diets are still wholesome and often unrefined, the rates of colon cancer are lower than in developed countries, where we rely on refined versions of flour, bread, rice and pasta, and where our intakes of vegetables and fruits are on the low side. When people from Africa and Asia, where rates of bowel cancer are low, move to high-risk westernized countries, their risk of developing bowel cancer increases, which adds further weight to the whole idea. Clearly a strong environmental factor plays a role in bowel cancer, a factor which is commonly agreed to be diet.
While parts of our population are happy to chomp away on 100 per cent raw foods (fruitarians and very strict vegans, to mention a couple), most of us would, in reality, find it hard to turn back the clock and pretend we’d never tasted the delights produced by the modern food industry. So it’s fortunate that modern food science has made it possible to create attractive and appetizing wholegrain options, which as well as tickling our fancy, will do us good on the inside too.
Wholegrain breakfast cereals such as All-Bran Plus, All-Bran Bite Size, Fruit ‘n’ Fibre, Bran Flakes, Oat Flakes, Weetabix and Shredded Wheat, and 100 per cent wholemeal bread, muffins, fruit scones and pitta are all ways of improving the wholegrain fibre at breakfast time.
The role that wholegrain cereals, especially wheat, plus fruits and vegetables play in preventing bowel cancer may not end with their ability to bulk out the stools and increase the number of times we need to go to the loo. They may also help by supplying us with vital antioxidants and other substances that have anti-carcinogenic effects in the bowel.
Phytate, for example, which is found in the large intestine as a result of eating wholegrain cereals, can bind potentially carcinogenic materials and render them harmless. So too can flavonols and tannins found in the undigested parts of vegetables. One last advantage of a diet rich in wholegrain cereals, fruits and vegetables is highlighted by famous UK bowel specialist, Dr Kenneth Heaton, who once wrote that such diets will be rich in micronutrients and potassium and low in fat, sugar and sodium. Such a diet combines virtually all the internationally accepted guidelines to healthy eating.
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