Even Good Food Has Carcinogens

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Ames Test - Carcinogens and Natural foods

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Yes, even good food has carcinogens. Should we be concerned? I suggest you check out that video. Ames discovered that food additives caused mutations, but that natural foods were even more mutagenic.

Now, that, my friends, is real science.

Speaking of worldviews, well, let's just say that the Platonic worldview, the one that posits an ideal form to everything and it is our job to remove the error to embody the ideal, is not quite right.

That is the problem. For example, pharmacos is a Greek word for toxins, poisons used to heal. Food is more complex than is commonly understood. What stresses us may be good for us in a certain measure.

The essay below is a synopsis of a long article in Science magazine from the 1980s that would be too long to reproduce here. The summarizing essay and the long article were both in Pearson and Shaw's Life Extension Companion. Let me explain the point of why I have posted this.

There is an article here about the carcinogens in fried potatoes, well-intentioned, but I am of the opinion that it is premised on the idea that the "good food" doesn't have carcinogens and the "bad food" has carcinogens. Once you discover a carcinogen- that is it! You don't eat that food. You only eat the "good foods". Very Platonic!

It is not that simple. In practice, there are no good foods. There are only better foods and worse foods.

Reading through the long article, it seems that basically all foods have carcinogens, or have them after you cook them, or have them after the ordinary process of digestion has been underway. Hey, and that includes all rabbit food and veggie fare as well.

Now I don't eat fried potatoes because of their fat content, but if I wanted to eat them, I wouldn't let that carcinogen stop me.

Alcohol is far more carcinogenic. I continue to drink, though, less than five drinks a week, and I take a lot of anti-oxidants that can neutralize the carcinogenic by-products of alcohol.

Wine is a combination of carcinogens, alcohol, for example, and anti-carcinogens such as resveratrol.

So, food, even good food, contains carcinogens. What you want to eat is a lot more anti-carcinogens on balance. I will follow up on this with some more information about diet and nutrition, the aging process and how supplements can contribute to well-being in the here and now as well as postpone the worst aspects of aging.

"In this issue of Science, Bruce Ames reviews the increasing body of evidence that large numbers of potent carcino­gens arise from natural processes. Mutagens are present in substantial quantities in fruits and vegetables. Carcinogens are formed in cooking as a result of reactions involving pro­teins or fats. Dietary practices may be an important determi­nant of current cancer risks.

Ames describes the role of plant materials as follows: Plants in nature synthesize toxic chemicals in large amounts, apparently as a primary defense against the hordes of bacteri­al, fungal, and insect and other animal predators.

Plants in the human diet are no exception.

The variety of toxic chemicals is so great that organic chemists have been characterizing them for over 100 years, and new plant chemicals are still being discovered. Recent widespread use of short-term tests for detecting mutagens and the increased testing of plant sub­stances for carcinogenicity in animals have contributed to the identification of many natural mutagens, teratogens, and car­cinogens in the human diet.

Safrole and related compounds are present in many ed­ible plants. Safrole is a carcinogen in rodents and some of its metabolites are mutagens. Oil of sassafras, once used to flavor some root beer, is about 75 percent safrole. Black pepper contains about 10 percent by weight of a closely related compound, piperine. Extracts of black pepper at a dose equiv­alent to 4 milligrams of dried pepper per day cause tumors in mice at many sites.

Many hydrazines are carcinogens and mutagens, and large amounts of them are found in edible mushrooms. One carcinogenic hydrazine is present in the false morel at a concentration of 50 milligrams per 100 grams. It causes lung tumors in mice at a level of 20 micrograms per mouse per day.

Carcinogens and mutagens are present in mold-contami­nated foods such as corn, nuts, peanut butter, bread, cheese, and fruit. Some of these contaminants, such as aflatoxin, are among the most potent known carcinogens and mutagens. Nitrosamines and nitroso compounds are suspect as causative agents of stomach and esophageal cancer in humans. In the digestive system these nitrogen compounds are formed from nitrate and nitrite.

Beets, celery, lettuce, spinach, radishes, and rhubarb all contain about 200 milligrams of nitrate per 100-gram portion.

Rancid fats are possible causative agents of colon and breast cancer in humans. These forms account for a substan­tial fraction of all the cancer deaths in the United States. Poly-unsaturated fats are easily oxidized on standing and in cook­ing to form mutagens, promoters, and carcinogens. Among the numerous products of such oxidations are fatty acid hydroperoxides and cholesterol epoxide. Thus the colon and digestive tract are exposed to many fat-derived carcinogens. Human breast fluid can contain high levels of cholesterol epoxide.

Burnt and browned materials formed by heating proteins during cooking are highly mutagenic. Chemicals isolated from such products have been found to be carcinogenic when fed to rodents. In addition, the browning reaction products from caramelization of sugars or the reaction of amino acids and sugars during cooking contain a large variety of DNA-damaging agents.

The view that dietary practices might be a causative factor in cancer is not new.

Epidemiologists have noted marked differences in cancer rates between population groups.

Effects from changes in diet following migration have also been observed. Results of current studies are beginning to delineate more sharply specific causative agents. When more definitive information is available, it should be possible for prudent people to choose fruits and vegetables that pre­sent minimal hazards. In the meantime, there is persuasive evidence that charred meats and rancid fats should not be part of the diet.

—Philip H. Abelson"