OBESITY causes cancer. That鈥檚 the take-home message from the most authoritative investigation ever undertaken into the links between lifestyle, diet and cancer.
The report by the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) and the American Institute for Cancer Research distils its findings into a list of 10 easy-to-follow recommendations that are designed to clarify the many, sometimes contradictory, recommendations that consumers are bombarded with.
About a third of cancers are related to diet. If you want to avoid the disease, your best bet is to stay slim, exercise every day and eat a largely plant-based diet.
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That advice should sound familiar. In a happy coming together for public health policy-makers, the same lifestyle factors that protect us against heart disease also protect us against cancer. Biologists will surely now be scrambling to tease apart the common links between cardiovascular disease, cancer and lifestyle.
This union of interest should make it easier for governments to act. The report鈥檚 focus on how energy-dense foods and drinks contribute to obesity makes their unrestricted sale look increasingly untenable.
Exactly what governments should do, though, is harder to say. The most effective ways to change lifestyles are by no means obvious, as governments that have tried to reduce the level of smoking among teenagers will attest. Indeed, the team that produced the WCRF report is reviewing various strategies, and plans to report on their effectiveness in a year. Health warnings, taxes or encouraging self-regulation could all play a part, as they have with smoking.
But the effects of diet on cancer are more subtle than the effect of smoking (see 鈥淭en ways to avoid cancer鈥�), so traditional ways of controlling consumption may not be appropriate. The prospect of cancer warnings on sausages or punitive taxes on salamis has the distinct feel of a sledgehammer taken to a nut.
To generate a proportionate response, governments should be prepared to look at other ideas. The new science of econophysics could help. This discipline uses physics-like models to explain the habits, fashions and the behaviour in crowds of ordinary people and is being applied to everything from trading strategies in the money markets to rioting behaviour. The approach could give insights into the kind of strategies that might change eating 鈥� and smoking 鈥� habits in appropriate ways. The WCRF report may represent a landmark in our understanding of diet and cancer but the work has only just begun.
