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If anyone still cares about nutritional epidemiology, perhaps we should talk about FIBER, since there& #39;s a brand spanking new study showing high-fiber diets are associated with less breast cancer risk.
But there& #39;s a special problem with studying fiber. https://acsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/cncr.32816">https://acsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/1...
But there& #39;s a special problem with studying fiber. https://acsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/cncr.32816">https://acsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/1...
If you had to pick one thing that was a marker for a healthful diet, I& #39;d go with fiber, since you get it in the most nutritious foods - veg, fruit, whole grains, legumes.
(As an aside, the thing that& #39;s a marker for the worst diets is bacon.)
(As an aside, the thing that& #39;s a marker for the worst diets is bacon.)
So diets high in fiber are ALWAYS high in other good things and studies that look at high-fiber diets and health outcomes pretty often find that those diets correlate with lower risk. BUT!
You have no way to figure out if it& #39;s the fiber or the other good things. Sure, it& #39;s reasonable to suspect that fiber is good -- gut health and all. But really we don& #39;t know. There& #39;s only one way to find out - a controlled trial with fiber SUPPLEMENTS.
There aren& #39;t very many of those. I went to Pubmed and searched "cancer fiber supplement" clinical trials and got this, showing fiber supplements don& #39;t decrease the recurrence of colorectal adenoma, but not much more. If you have others, send & #39;em! https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10770980 ">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10...
In general, trials with fiber SUPPLEMENTS are meh. There are some benefits - supplementation does seem to lower cholesterol, and it& #39;s reasonable to conclude (I have) that fiber is generally good for you. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27724985 ">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27...
To sum up, fiber& #39;s probably good, but epi studies of high fiber diets and different health outcomes are likely to be hopelessly confounded by the other good things in high-fiber foods and the health habits of people who eat them.
We now return to our regular COVID programming.
We now return to our regular COVID programming.
