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Diet High in Fiber Shown to Cut Bowel Cancer Risk
By Patricia Reaney May 02, 2003

LONDON (Reuters) - Britons and the French get it from vegetables, the Dutch and Germans from cereals, and fruit provides it for Italians and Spaniards.

But wherever it comes from, fiber reduces bowel cancer risk, scientists said on Friday.

A massive study of European eating habits and U.S. research into diet and early signs of bowel, or colorectal, cancer show consuming foods rich in fiber cuts the risk of developing the disease, which affects more than 940,000 people in the world each year.

The findings contradict earlier research that suggested fiber did not protect against bowel cancer, but the scientists said people surveyed in previous studies were probably not eating enough fiber to show an effect on disease risk.

"People in the top 20 percent who had the biggest reduction were eating far more fiber than in other studies which have not shown a relationship," Professor Sheila Bingham, who conducted the European study, said in an interview.

The research, involving more than half a million people in 10 European countries, was the biggest study done on diet and cancer, said Bingham, head of the diet and cancer group at the British Medical Research Council's Dunn Human Nutrition Unit in Cambridge, England.

It suggested that if people who ate less than the recommended five portions of fruit and vegetables a day doubled their intake of fiber the risk of bowel cancer could be slashed by 40 percent.

"You want loads of fruits and vegetables on your plate and whole-meal pasta and less fats and less meat," Bingham said.

Researchers at the National Cancer Institute in Rockville, Maryland, found similar results in their study of nearly 3,600 people with non-malignant colon adenoma, polyps which can be precursors of bowel cancer, and almost 34,000 other people.

"In our study, high intakes of dietary fiber, especially from grains, cereals and fruits, was associated with lower risk of colon adenoma," Ulrike Peters, of the National Cancer Institute, said in the study.

Cancers of the bowel and rectum are rare in developing countries but kill more than 490,000 people in industrialized states each year, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France.

The European study showed different sources of fiber among people in the 10 countries, but the researchers said it did not seem to matter where it came from. People with the lowest risk were eating five or more portions of fruit and vegetables a day plus the equivalent of five slices of whole-meal bread.

"The more the better is the answer," Bingham said.

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