HealthNewsLine.net published an article with the above headline on March 7, 2016. The article was based on a study published by the American Association for Cancer Research in their journal, Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers & Prevention.
Foods with a high glycemic index like white bread, cake, biscuits, or processed breakfast cereal trigger higher insulin in the blood which has been linked to certain types of cancer.
Dr. Xifeng Wu, chair of cancer prevention at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, studied the health and dietary histories of 1,900 people with lung cancer and 2,400 without lung cancer to find out if lung cancer could be linked to a high glycemic index.
The study revealed that people with diets ranked in the top fifth of a high-glycemic diet had a 49 percent greater risk of developing lung cancer than those in the bottom fifth. Surprisingly, non-smokers with a high-glycemic diet were 81 percent more likely to develop lung cancer than those non-smokers with a low glycemic diet.
“Although smoking is a major, well-characterized risk factor for lung cancer, it does not account for all the variations in lung cancer risk,” said Wu. “This study provides additional evidence that diet may independently, and jointly with other risk factors, impact lung cancer etiology.”
The study authors recommended a diet which avoided intakes of food with a high glycemic index like cake, processed cereal, and white bread. Healthier choices are foods with a low glycemic index like whole wheat and pasta.
“The results from this study suggest that, besides maintaining healthy lifestyles, reducing the consumption of foods and beverages with high glycemic index may serve as a means to lower the risk of lung cancer,” Wu concluded.
