Interesting article in The Guardian (UK)

I saw this article on The Guardian website discussing how pharmaceutical companies sponsor research and the questionable reliability of results which indicate their products are better than their competitor's. However the article begins with a more familiar example, mentioning how research sponsored by the US National Cattlemen's Association showed that the Aitkin's diet may lower cholesterol. This is unreliable because they would never allow any research they funded which found that meat consumption is dangerous to human health to be published.

As it happens, recent research on rodents indicates that a high fat diet such as Aitkin's causes inflammation of the lower intestine. Of course, this is in mice so who knows what it is doing to humans; but for years now there have been studies which identify inflammation as a precursor to colon cancer. The inflammation itself seems to be caused by increased presence of free radicals which induce what is known as oxidative stress. In a nutshell, the free radicals damage cell membranes and the DNA inside them. Colon cancer occurs after a series of such changes (ie mutations) in the DNA of cells in the wall of the intestine.

Just to drive this message home one more time, vegan diets can be high in fat if you are not careful. So go easy on the tofutti cuties!

Sources: Ildiko Erdelyi, Natasha Levenkova, Elaine Y. Lin, John T. Pinto, Martin Lipkin, Fred W. Quimby and Peter R. Holt (2009). Western-Style Diets Induce Oxidative Stress and Dysregulate Immune Responses in the Colon in a Mouse Model of Sporadic Colon Cancer. Journal of Nutrition,139 (11): 2072-2078

Laurie A. VanderVeen, Muhammed F. Hashim, Yu Shyr, and Lawrence J. Marnett (2003). Induction of frameshift and base pair substitution mutations by the major DNA adduct of the endogenous carcinogen malondialdehyde. PNAS 100:14247-14252

Julia Bollrath, Toby J. Phesse, Vivian A. von Burstin, Tracy Putoczki, Moritz Bennecke, Trudie Bateman, Tim Nebelsiek, Therese Lundgren-May, Özge Canli, Sarah Schwitalla, Vance Matthews, Roland M. Schmid, Thomas Kirchner, Melek C. Arkan, Matthias Ernst, Florian R. Greten (2009). gp130-Mediated Stat3 Activation in Enterocytes Regulates Cell Survival and Cell-Cycle Progression during Colitis-Associated Tumorigenesis. Cancer Cell, Volume 15, Issue 2, 91-102.

Sergei Grivennikov, Eliad Karin, Janos Terzic, Daniel Mucida, Guann-Yi Yu, Sivakumar Vallabhapurapu, Jürgen Scheller, Stefan Rose-John, Hilde Cheroutre, Lars Eckmann and Michael Karin (2009). IL-6 and Stat3 Are Required for Survival of Intestinal Epithelial Cells and Development of Colitis-Associated Cancer. Cancer Cell, Volume 15, Issue 2, 103-113.