Fed: Evidence on white bread points to bowel cancer risk
By Rada Rouse, National Medical Correspondent
BRISBANE, Feb 17 AAP - White bread and refined cereals should be swapped for wholegrainfoods to reduce the risk of bowel cancer, experts said today after reviewing scientificevidence.
The Cancer Council NSW said Australians should choose wholemeal or wholegrain for atleast half of their daily servings of breads, cereals, rice and pasta.
The evidence was now strong enough to make such a quantitative recommendation, thecouncil's chief executive, Dr Andrew Penman, said.
Up to now, the only public message on the issue has been a National Health and MedicalResearch Council recommendation to consume four serves a day of cereal-based foods.
"We are now going further and suggesting this be modified to include two serves a dayof wholegrain cereal," Dr Penman told AAP.
The new advice follows a review by the CSIRO of the latest studies linking reducedrisk of colorectal cancer to the consumption of wholegrain components of cereals includingthe outer bran layer, the germ and endosperm.
Dr Graeme McIntosh, principal research scientist in the gut health and colon cancerprevention program of the CSIRO's Health Sciences and Nutrition laboratories in Adelaide,said the review suggested that fibre was not the only protective thing about cereals.
The anti-cancer effect may be down to the nutrients and phytochemicals which are alsoremoved from grains during the refining process, he said.
In his review, published in a supplement to the Australian Journal of Nutrition andDietetics, Dr McIntosh said the risk of disease could be reduced by as much as 40 percent if wholegrain or wholemeal food options were chosen regularly as part of a diet alsorich in fruits and vegetables.
The review found strong evidence for wholegrain protection against colorectal cancer,some evidence for protection against gastric cancer but only a weak link to lung, breastand prostate cancer risk.
Dr Penman said following the review the Cancer Council and Go Grains, a public educationinitiative of the Grains Research and Development Corporation, had called on food regulatoryauthorities to address the issue of consumer understanding of the word "wholegrain".
Go Grains manager Trish Griffiths said manufacturers should have to meet a criteriaof 25 per cent wholegrain ingredients before a food could be labelled as "source of wholegrain"
and 50 per cent wholegrain to qualify as a "good source".
"The issues need to be made clearer to consumers because many people would not thinkof rolled oats as a wholegrain cereal but it is," she told AAP.
The Australia New Zealand Food Authority should allow such wholegrain nutrient claimsso that people understood they did not have to buy bread with big grains in it to achievean intake of wholemeal food, she said.
AAP rr/sc/cd/sb
KEYWORD: WHOLEGRAIN
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