Ultra-Processed Foods Can Drive Your Colorectal Cancer Risk (10:35)
Colorectal cancer, the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States, may be fueled by the food on our plates
Broadcast Retirement Network’s Jeffrey Snyder discusses the prevention of colorectal cancer with Tim Yeatman, MD, FACS & Ganesh Halade, PhD. of the USF Health Heart Institute.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
This morning on BRN Lifestyle, ultra processed foods can increase your risk for colorectal cancer. Joining me now to discuss this is Dr. Tim Yeatman and Dr. Ganesh Halade of the USF Health Heart Institute. Dr. Yeatman, Dr. Halade, great to see you. Thanks for joining us on the program this morning.
Tim Yeatman, MD, USF Health Heart Institute
Thank you, happy to be here. Thank you for having us.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, this is, and look, this is a really important topic and just as a baseline for our audience, we’ve been talking about, is the American diet healthy or unhealthy? And that part of that conversation, doctors, is around ultra processed food. Dr. Yeatman, I’ll start with you. Pardon me, sir. What’s the impact of eating all these ultra processed foods on our bodies and more importantly, for issues like cancer, diabetes, et cetera?
Tim Yeatman, MD, USF Health Heart Institute
Yeah, good question. So basically, I think we are what we eat. We’ve heard that before, right?
And the fats that we’re concerned about are quite frankly, essential fatty acids, the omega-6s and these omega-3s. And the omega-6s, unfortunately, in such prevalence in our diet that we might, we generally overwhelm the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3. A healthy ratio is considered one to one or maybe two to one in favor of omega-6 to three, but many of us run 25 to one.
And this has happened probably over the last 20 years as the food sources have changed to more processed foods where we’ve included these seed oils, such as soybean oil, cottonseed oil, sunflower oil, and so forth in the foods because they’re a cheap source of oil as opposed to olive oil, avocado oil, walnut oil, almond oil. So what’s happened is I think our diets have changed to sort of a massive influx of the omega-6s versus the omega-3s. And it’s almost impossible to eat enough amino fish to overcome what else is in our diet.
And that’s one of the problems. And certainly you can’t supplement your way out of it. And supplementing with fish oil is not the way to go because you can get a-fib with that.
And it’s already proven not to be that effective to go that route. So a better route is to try to reduce the omega-6s in the diet and at the same time increase the omega-3s. That ratio has proven to be associated with long-term mortality, all-cause mortality, cancer, and chronic diseases.
So we now think chronic disease, or chronic inflammation, I should say, is a root cause of many diseases, including cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, arthritis, on and on. So inflammation, chronic inflammation, seems to be the root cause of all diseases. And that’s what we saw in our colon cancer cases, that there appeared to be chronic inflammation in the tissue which makes it akin to a poorly healing wound or a wound that won’t heal.
And that was observed by a pathologist in the 1800s named Burkow. And he suggested that cancer is a poorly healing wound or wound that won’t heal. And it’s because of these inflammatory cells that have infiltrated the tissue.
And they are governed by these inflammatory, pro-inflammatory lipids, and they can only come from our diet.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
And Dr. Hall, I mean, thank you, Dr. Aitman for that. Dr. Halade, those foods, those ultra processed foods, look, I have to be honest, I don’t eat a lot of them, but they do taste very good. And as Dr. Aitman said, they cause, potentially cause inflammation. What can we do to move away? Because so many Americans, including myself, consume these products.
Ganesh Halade, PhD., USF Health Heart Institute
Yeah, actually, Dr. Aitman very eloquently said that, like how these ultra processed foods are contributing to the cancer and different types of disease. The fundamental things is that these all processed food is making our metabolism defective. So our engines is getting clogged, which process whatever we eat, whether we eat the protein, whether we eat fat or carbohydrates.
Then we are eating these in excess amount, because the food industry or processed food industry become very smarter to make the foods very palatable. That’s the kind of real key. That’s why we are eating those food really in excess amount.
That’s changing the ratio of what Dr. Aitman mentioned. It is kind of shifting that higher omega six and lower omega three. But to change and coming back to the normal one thing, we have to limit these all ultra processed food and ensure that our food industry is making high quality products and limiting the ingredients which are manufactured in the industry.
So that is one key component. And the more we will go back to our ancient practices, like home cooked food is the best food rather than packaged food or in a processed food. So that’s the key thoughts.
One more thought is like when you are overthinking about the diet, we have to think about our physical activity and sleep, because most of the time when we start with the food and end up with the food, but other two key components that disrupts or maintain our metabolism is the sleep and exercise or the physical activity.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, really good points, Dr. Aitman from Dr. Halade. It seems to me, doctor, just being a novice and not a layperson, there’s an educational component for consumers like myself and others that are buying product, but then there’s also an FDA, Food Drug Administration, I think they have oversight here, would you agree with that? I mean, how do we move forward?
I mean, you’ve done a lot of research, you and Dr. Halade et al have done a lot of research here. How do we get that to the right people to make the right decisions for customers, but also the oversight of the food industry?
Tim Yeatman, MD, USF Health Heart Institute
Well, I’m actually in active conversations with counsel to FDA and others that might influence them. Of course, the FDA has established what goes on the label. And the question is in front of the FDA now is that label good enough?
And it was great to have all these ingredients listed on the label from the highest to the lowest concentration. But as you know, these labels can be very small, you need a magnifying glass to see them. And many times you’ll find embedded in the labels, soybean oil, I got some Christmas gifts today and it was pecan pie loaded with soybean oil and partially hydrogenated soybean oil.
So all of a sudden, it’s embedded with all these bad fats and I read it by getting a magnifying glass to look at the label. So how do we avoid that? Well, I think the labels need to change.
We need to think about maybe giving an inflammatory index to the labels or a big number on there showing the number of ingredients. The fewer ingredients, generally the better, the fewer at least processed ingredients, let’s say. Obviously, you can put spices and things and things, but if you look at bread even today, many of them have all sorts of things you don’t quite recognize beyond vitamins.
And I always wonder why vitamins are put back in the bread and I’ve understood now that it may be stripped out of the wheat in the processing. So you add it back because you process the wheat. So all these things are sort of modern, not agricultural but modern food processing that is led to a inexpensive food product but costly on the backend.
One of the things we don’t think about, and this is good for your audience, is the cost of Medicare and Medicaid. If you think about it, if we drive up the cost of chronic diseases from a lifetime of bad food, what does it do to the backend of our Medicare costs? It drives them up.
So the primary drivers of healthcare costs today in Medicare are heart disease and diabetes, number one and two. And so if you could reduce the incidence of those things, then you could buy better food, which would be a lot cheaper way than paying for it on the backend, paying for disease treatment. And that’s sort of a statement of where we need to go with the healthcare system.
It needs to get more to prevention and instead of just disease treatment. Most of the Medicare codes are treatment codes, not prevention codes. So doctors don’t get paid to prevent disease and that’s why there’s not a lot of counseling on this.
So back to the labels. If the labels could be better, if they could be, maybe we could look at the number of ingredients and the inflammatory index. The other thing is there are web, there are apps that you can get on your phone.
One is, and they’re free, one is called Bobby Approved, B-O-B-B-Y Approved, and you can scan the barcode on any food and it will tell you whether it’s approved and what it searches for are the seed oils and other processed ingredients that are not good. So if it says Bobby not approved, then you know right away. And that’s something simple you could do.
You pull out your phone and scan the item and when you can’t read the label.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, I mean, pretty, I don’t use magnifying glass, I have to use these at my age now, the reading glasses, but you make a really good point. You know, I think more to come on this, it’s great that you’re having conversations, Dr. Gateman, with the FDA. Hopefully we can see- Indirectly.
Correct, indirectly, but we’re making progress. It’s certainly a big issue. It’s one that’s been picked up in the national media and hopefully we’ll continue the conversation.
Dr. Halade, Dr. Gateman, so great to see you. Thanks for joining us and we look forward to having you both back on the program in the coming new year.
Tim Yeatman, MD, USF Health Heart Institute
Sounds great, thank you.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
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Until then, I’m Jeff Snyder. Stay safe, keep on saving. And don’t forget, roll with the changes.