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Connection between food and cancer: Slim to none

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Dick Whitman, Apr 23, 2014.

  1. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    So say researchers these days. (Obesity is a factor, but not obesity as connected to the consumption of any particular food.)

    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/22/science/an-apple-a-day-and-other-myths.html?action=click&contentCollection=The%20Upshot&module=MostEmailed&version=Full&region=Marginalia&src=me&pgtype=article

    I eagerly await Big Ragu's counter-polemic.
     
  2. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member

    But, science:

     
  3. doctorquant

    doctorquant Well-Known Member

    I recently made a presentation to an academic (business) audience about the difference between "statistical significance" and "practical significance," an idea to which this article alludes.

    To put this in context ... let's say we have two groups of over-50 men. One group is the heavy beef-eaters, the other is the not-heavy beef-eaters. Taking this risk differential as a given, we'd have to have about 233 in each group before we'd expect to see a difference of 1 in the number of men getting colorectal cancer.
     
  4. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    Dick, your wife did not appreciate your touchdown dance (with spike of the remote) in the living room.
     
  5. MisterCreosote

    MisterCreosote Well-Known Member

    Companies should not have to be burdened by onerous costs brought on by arbitrary exclusion of cancer-causing ingredients.

    I would never ask companies to exclude cancer-causing ingredients based on my definition of cancer-causing. If enough people don't want cancer, companies that are causing it will get the message and stop.
     
  6. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    There is no way in hell I'm bringing this story to her attention. I've tried in the past - with honorable intentions, actually, to try to assuage her anxiety about it.

    It doesn't end well.

    I think I've told this story here before. I had to pull over to the side of the road on the way to a Rolling Stones concert to tap out a Facebook apology, with her approval after an exacting review, after I posted a story like this - I think it was an anti-organic food piece on Slate - on the Facebook feed of her organic food buddy.
     
  7. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    In related news, this development proves Genesis.
     
  8. 93Devil

    93Devil Well-Known Member

    This is of much more interest to health insurance companies.
     
  9. MisterCreosote

    MisterCreosote Well-Known Member

    "I ain't afraid of cancer. I had broccoli for lunch." -- George Carlin
     
  10. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    I was just going to post something like that. Cancer is pretty overrated on the list of health concerns compared with those two.

    Unfortunately, many people will read this report and decide no food is bad for you anymore. And that would increase rates of heart disease and diabetes, and by extension death rates.
     
  11. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    Well, and cancer, too. Because obesity is a cause of cancer, just like it is a cause of the others. I just think we're starting to realize there aren't particular cancer-causing and cancer-preventing foods.

    I think cancer puts the fear of God into people for a few reasons. First of all, it's so random. You can spot the guy who is going to have heart disease. Cancer seems to strike so randomly. Little kids get it, for example. It's vicious.

    Second of all, we see what it does to people. I'm sure most of us have been around a friend or relative suffering from late-stage cancer. You're never quite the same after witnessing it.
     
  12. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    That's true. Heart disease tends to be more instant death.

    But I also think the pinkwashing/Livestrong/etc. has marketed cancer to the top.
     
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