Day 269 - 25 Jun 96 - Page 49
1 appears - to their ingestion of their special bread or was
2 it porridge?
3 A. The case is being made here that it was due to the
4 fibre.
5
6 Q. Yes, that may not be so, but it seems, on the face of the
7 data --
8 A. Yes.
9
10 Q. -- it appears to have been the ingestion of the fibrous
11 bread?
12 A. That is correct.
13
14 Q. That has accounted for the lower colon cancer rate?
15 A. Correct.
16
17 Q. Do you know of anything almost 20 years on which suggests
18 that in any sense this study was likely to have been
19 flawed?
20 A. I do not think the study was necessarily flawed. I
21 think the evidence that has happened since then, largely
22 produced by Willett and others, is that there is a strong
23 relationship between colon cancer and prostate cancer and
24 dietary fats, particularly saturated fats, and I think that
25 they emphasize, if I am correct in my recollection, meat as
26 one of the sources of fat particularly with regard to
27 prostate cancer as being incriminated. And what this paper
28 would suggest is that the reason for the low prevalence of
29 cancer, this particular cancer in Finland, was associated
30 with two things.
31
32 One is the low intake of meat, high intake of milk, which
33 interestingly has apparently got some protective factors in
34 it which are not present in meat and other animal
35 products. So I think what it does is to focus more on the
36 meat and animal products if you take the contemporary
37 evidence into account. The converse, of course, is
38 obviously true. Sorry, if I interrupted you.
39
40 Q. It is all right.
41 A. But the converse is obviously true that the fibre has
42 always been considered as a protective agent so far as
43 colon cancer is concerned as well.
44
45 Q. Do you not agree then that we are on modern data, in which
46 I think certainly I would include this if you would?
47 A. Yes.
48
49 Q. We are arriving at a position that may suggest, and I am
50 not searching for positives, that it is the antioxidant
51 vegetable content of the diet which is important, at any
52 rate in relation to colon cancer rather than the fat
53 content?
54 A. I do not know that I would agree with that, my Lord.
55 I think that the sum total of the evidence is that we are
56 looking at, I hate to use the word, but it is the best way
57 to look at it, a kind of holistic approach to these
58 problems, that you get diets which are rich in saturated
59 fats and low in the anti-oxidant protective agents and low
60 in the dietary fibres that are protective again.
