More fodder for the fat-but-healthy debate
One of the most divisive and emotional debates regarding obesity is whether being fat automatically equals being unhealthy. While many experts point to mounds of evidence linking excess weight to such life-shortening conditions as cancer, Type 2 diabetes and heart disease, others argue that those conditions aren't necessarily caused by fat itself but by related issues such as poor diet and lack of physical activity.
The argument may escalate after this morning's release of newly compiled data that suggests that "excess body fat alone is responsible for more than 100,000 cancer cases in the U.S.," according to press materials.
The report comes from the American Institute for Cancer Research, whose mission is to support research into the relationship between nutrition, physical activity and cancer, and to provide guidance on reducing cancer risk through lifestyle changes. Researchers speaking this morning are expected to make note of the public's lack of awareness of the link between cancer and obesity.
To quantify that link -- and perhaps to help raise that public awareness -- Laurence Kolonel of the Cancer Research Center of Hawaii paired the findings of the AICR's report "Policy and Action for Cancer Prevention,' which was released in February, and cancer-prevalence data from the American Cancer Society. He came up with an estimate of the total number of cancer cases in the U.S. that can be attributed solely to excess body fat.
That number, 100,500 (which reflects the percentages of cases of endometrial, esophageal, pancreatic, kidney, gallbladder, breast and colorectal cancers that the earlier report found could be attributed to excess body fat) certainly sounds dramatic, though it really is just a way of repackaging information we already knew.
Kolonel says the studies on which those percentages were based controlled for other risk factors, allowing for body fat's role as a cancer risk factor to be determined. Though the link between fat and cancer appears strong and consistent across the studies, he does allow that the findings stop short of establishing a cause-and-effect relationship.
Nor has anyone pinned down exactly how body fat might increase cancer risk. Kolonel explains that body fat isn't just sitting around waiting to be drawn on when your body's starving. In fact, he says, there are "all kinds of thing going on in fat tissue," including production of estrogen and other cancer-promoting hormones. Fat tissue also contributes to inflammation, an established cancer precursor, he says.
Do you believe that body weight and diseases such as cancer are directly related? Or do you think it's far more complicated than that? Please register your view in today's poll.
Jennifer LaRue Huget
November 5, 2009; 7:00 AM ET
Categories: Cancer , Nutrition and Fitness , Obesity , Prevention
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