People Who Eat This Popular Snack May Raise Their Cancer Risk By 50%, Study Finds
Karola G | CanvaAs someone whose diet is 92.7% cheese (yes, I made that number up, but it’s an accurate estimate), I was disheartened to learn of news related to a cancer study. It turns out that consuming cheddar cheese and cream cheeses can increase the risk of breast cancer by fifty percent.
Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer among American women, and about 1 in 8 women will develop it in their lifetime, according to the American Cancer Society. This is why every new study on potential risk factors generates headlines, and why it matters to read every headline carefully instead of just reacting to them.
Before you start throwing out those blocks of cheese you saved for your Netflix binge on the weekend, let's look into the research. A 2017 study conducted by the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in New York examined the dairy intake of more than 3,000 women over 11 years.
In doing so, they found that women who eat cheese raise their cancer risk by fifty percent
Juliana Barquero / Unsplash
Dairy contains a growth hormone called IGF-1 (Insulin-like Growth Factor), and unfortunately, high intake of that hormone does seem to potentially promote cancer. On the plus side, the study also found that eating yogurt cuts the risk by 30%.
We are all taught to eat a balanced diet, but if you’re anything like me, you have two major food groups: cheese and bread! (Even better when it’s cheesy bread! Am I right?) But there is still hope, even for cheese lovers like me.
Manveet Basra, Senior Public Health Officer at Breast Cancer Now, explained, “Despite this, and many other studies looking at whether or not there is a link between diet or specific foods and breast cancer, this link is still not clear.” So, we still don't know whether your favorite cheese increases your risk of cancer.
Naturally, every new finding brings out other voices of opposition
Research reported in the New York Times, about that year's annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, states that decades of studies related to specific foods as potential causes of or protections against cancer are now considered weakly associated, with one expert saying "During the last two decades the connection between the foods we eat and the cellular anarchy called cancer has been unraveling string by string."
Expanding upon a plenary presentation made by Harvard epidemiologist Dr. Walter C. Willett continues with the following: "Whatever is true for other diseases, when it comes to cancer there was little evidence that fruits and vegetables are protective or that fatty foods are bad ... [Unless] a person is seriously malnourished, the influence of specific foods is so weak that the signal is easily swamped by noise...
The hypothesis that fatty foods are a direct cause of cancer has also been crumbling, along with the case for eating more fiber. The idea that red meat causes colon cancer is shrouded in ambiguity. If hamburgers are carcinogenic, the effect appears to be mild." Dr. Willet summed it all up by saying, “Diet and cancer [have] turned out to be more complex and challenging than any of us expected.”
Unfortunately, at the end of the day, there are things one can do to prevent cancer, but — and this is a big but — it can happen to any of us.
Even the healthiest of the healthiest can be diagnosed with cancer
Cancer can be a scary diagnosis, but breast cancer treatment has come a long way, and we can only hope that one day a cure is found. Maybe the takeaway is to eat mindfully, move your body, keep up with your health screenings, and remember that the headline is rarely the whole story. Life is too short to live in fear of a plate of cheese.
Liza Walter is a freelance writer who has appeared in HuffPost, BRIDES, Bust Magazine, Ravishly, and more.
