Day 256 - 04 Jun 96 - Page 65
1 A. Only vaguely.
2
3 Q. They are periodical reviews done by panels of experts, on
4 behalf of our Department of Health in this country, of
5 different aspects of diet; and for each topic there is a
6 different review group, as it were.
7
8 Can I ask you to turn, please, to page -- I will start at
9 the beginning -- page 39. That is a chapter on -----
10
11 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Is this 41 or 46?
12
13 MR. RAMPTON: 41, my Lord, sorry -- Dietary Reference Values for
14 Food Energy and Nutrients for the United Kingdom. It is in
15 this book, Professor Campbell, that one finds the panel's
16 recommendations for different aspects of diet, and this
17 chapter is on fat in the diet, and it deals with various
18 topics, including, as you see at page 49, fat and cancer,
19 at 3.5. I tell you that this was first published in 1991
20 and reprinted in 1994.
21
22 I am not going to ask you, unless you would like to do so,
23 to read all the review of fat and cancer, reviewing the
24 evidence to date under the headings Geographical
25 Variations, Animal Studies, Epidemiology, Colon Cancer,
26 Cancer and Serum Cholesterol, Prostatic Cancer; and then,
27 on page 52, Dietary Fat and aetiology of cancer.
28
29 May I read this, because you may not be familiar with
30 this.
31
32 "A number of mechanisms whereby fat could be involved in
33 cancer promotion has been suggested. Hormones,
34 particularly oestrogens, are known to be important
35 promoters of both animal and breast cancer but there are
36 conflicting reports on the effect of fat on circulating
37 levels of oestrogen, other female sex hormone levels and
38 sex hormone binding globulin. Other suggested mechanisms
39 include modulation of immune function and prostanoid
40 synthetic pathways, and membrane lipid peroxidation. In
41 bowel cancer, it has been proposed that the concentration
42 of faecal bile acids is increased by high fat diets and
43 that secondary bile acids act as tumour promoters.
44 However, individuals living in areas with a high risk of
45 colon cancer do not have a higher faecal bile acid
46 concentration or total faecal bile acid output compared
47 with those living in areas with a low risk, neither do
48 cases of large bowel cancer have higher faecal bile acid
49 outputs or concentrations compared with controls. Other
50 factors modulating the solubility of free bile acids may be
51 involved.
52
53 "Conclusions. The Panel concluded that there is currently
54 insufficient evidence on which to base a recommendation for
55 a decrease in fat intakes to prevent cancer, although an
56 increase in consumption of any fatty acid should not be
57 encouraged. The Panel agreed that the Dietary Reference
58 Values based on other considerations and presented in
59 paragraph 3.8 were consistent with a prudent view of the
60 current data relating dietary fat and the occurrence of
