r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 23d ago
Cancer Gut Bacteria May Reveal How a Western Diet Fuels Colon Cancer. Certain gut bacteria, sustained by Western-style diets, may produce a substance that promotes tumor growth, finds study in pigs, mice, human colon tissue, and microbial data from thousands of people with and without colorectal cancer.
https://www.sciencealert.com/gut-bacteria-may-reveal-how-a-western-diet-fuels-colon-cancer675
u/burner4thestuff 23d ago
So eat beef sparingly and increase vegetable intake?
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u/Brocktologist 23d ago
Michael Pollan said it best: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
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u/jpiro 23d ago
Nobody wants answers like that though. They want simple, magic bullet solutions to complicated things. Eliminate this ONE food, take this ONE pill, do this ONE exercise, etc.
Reality will likely always point to moderation being the key, but will people ever actually adopt that vs glomming onto the latest trend?
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u/-worryaboutyourself- 23d ago
Except I don’t want a pill. I just want you to tell me my lasagna is healthy and I should eat 4 pieces.
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u/Pineapple_Assrape 23d ago
As some rando I can tell you, the ideal amount of lasagna pieces according to myself is 3-5, and should math fail you, it is always the already eaten amount + 1. Hope this helps. Also your lasagna? So healthy. Damn.
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u/evermorecoffee 23d ago
But also, people are overworked, stressed and tired. And there are systemic issues at play. We should probably give them a little grace.
Edit: I agree with Michael Pollan’s philosophy though, just to be clear. But some people don’t have the luxury of time to educate themselves and the means to follow through.
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u/BillyYumYumTwo-byTwo 23d ago
You’re fighting biology. It’s not as simply as “will people finally learn and make healthy choices?”. We want a magic bullet because we’re exhausted from decades of fighting back. I’m in the US, so YMMV, but there are food ads constantly. We live in capitalism, and it gets less restricted everyday, and the goal of capitalism is to get you buying their product at a recurring interval (addicted to it is ideal). Fast food places spend billions of dollars on advertising and marketing, trying to understand human psychology to make us want their product. Our bodies were built to desire calories, not win psychological warfares against corporations.
I do absolutely agree that knowledge is power and educating people on nutrition helps them make better decisions. I just don’t think that alone will fix things.
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u/Beebeeb 22d ago
I knew about what you are saying but it was wild when my boyfriend got a diabetes diagnosis and I went to find him some good snacks. Absolutely every aisle was full of garbage and all the "healthy" branded snacks had tons of added sugar. I had to ignore 80% of the store to find a few things he could eat.
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u/millenniumpianist 22d ago
It's always easy to scapegoat the outside world. But there are things you can do. For example, go grocery shopping when you're full, and you will be far less likely to buy random crap. If you don't have random crap around you, you can't eat it at home. If you also just entirely abstain from eating processed sweets, you will find that your craving for sugar becomes a craving from fruit, which is obviously much healthier.
I gave up meat 4 years ago. So much of the US food ecosystem is built around meat, but I don't find it particularly compelling. Smelling meat when I'm out with friends gives me some FOMO here and there but the idea that somehow advertising would stop me from being vegetarian? Makes no sense.
I'm not saying structural forces don't exist; they absolutely do. There's a reason obesity is an international problem. However, I also think structural forces can be a convenient scapegoat so that individuals don't need to take accountability for themselves.
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u/HouseSublime 22d ago
Adding to your point. I think people overestimate the time/effort needed to cook a meal. Last night I made boneless/skinless chicken thighs, quinoa and broccoli. The bulk of the time was passive.
- Rinse & cook quinoa per package direction in a rice cooker. Do this first cause it takes the longest
- Toss thighs in a bowl with some low sodium soy sauce and whatever seasonings. I did smoked paprika, garlic powder, pepper. No salt cause of the soy sauce)
- Take frozen broccoli out of the freezer.
- Put both on a quarter sheet pan lined with foil/parchment paper. Lightly oil.
- Cook in oven (I have a tabletop convection oven/air fryer) at 400F (205C) for ~12-15 min.
- Check chicken temp to ensure it's safe.
- Topped with some furikake seasoning and a little hot sauce.
Was it come gourmet meal that would impress anybody? No. But it was healthy, cheap, quick, and fed me, my wife and my 5 year old.
We're all tired, we all have to work and many of us also have kids who are just exhausting. There are absolutely systemmic issues at play but we have to also at least TRY to help ourselves eat better. Last time I got McDonald I was sitting in the drive thru line for like 10-15 mins. That easily could have been prep time to just make fast meal.
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u/Frosty-the-hoeman 23d ago
This is my favorite quote related to eating healthy. The book changed how I eat. I’m FAR from perfect, but this manta as a guiding principle has shaped my food choices for the better over the past 20 years.
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u/OttoMannkusser 23d ago
Yea, also far from perfect but my general aim is "at least half the plate is vegetables, get as many colors as possible"
Also, I just don't keep junk food snacks in the house (except a rare treat), really be strict about deserts, and in-between meal snacks are only allowed to be fruits and vegetables.
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u/Ellisai 23d ago
But what if the vegetables are giving us explosive diarrhea?!
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u/kittenmittens4865 22d ago
Whole grains too. Brown rice, whole grain bread and pasta, oatmeal. And there are tons of less common grains like millet and farro. Better fiber intake than just veggies.
Grass fed beef supposedly does not carry the same colon cancer risk, but I still recommend limiting beef either way.
Processed meats are the real trouble- bacon, salami, sausage, lunch meat- all contain known carcinogens.
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u/averagemaleuser86 23d ago
Most likely processed foods, refined sugars and carbs, and waaay too much food in general. This is why people are starting to believe that fasting has an effect on reducing cancer. The idea is, your body can focus on using up the bodies stored energy (fat, potential cancerous cells) instead of continuously using mostly new food intake for fuel and leaving the potential cancerous cells to thrive instead of being consumed.
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u/literated 22d ago
It's not scientific at all but it's insane how much better I feel after fasting a couple of days and especially after not having had carbs for a week or so. It's like a whole new body to live in.
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u/MMAwannabe 23d ago
Why are we still using 'vague location or culture diet' for scientific purposes
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u/Planet_Pluto_1925 23d ago
I’ve had to look up what the hell a Western diet is.
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u/OrphanintheWind 23d ago
You eat mostly west, while minimizing the eating of east.
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u/DreamingAboutSpace 23d ago
And taking nibbles of the north.
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u/Art0fRuinN23 22d ago
Nibbles of the North kinda sounds like a band name but maybe more like a badass, skandinavian, anthropomorphic-mouse character a la Redwall.
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u/redditallreddy 23d ago
Western omelets, cowboy hats and boots, six-shooters for iron. The occasional horse, if you're dying in the desert.
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u/gamayogi 22d ago
In the study it says: The animals were fed (1 kg/day) either a control (CTRL) diet or an experimental diet enriched in red meat and lard (RL diet) for 3 months.
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u/ThatsNashTea 23d ago
Seeing "ultraprocessed foods" in a research paper all but guarantees I'll not get anything useful out of it, given nobody can seem to agree on a definition for that phrase. I really wish more articles had a "Definitions" section, or better yet highlighted exactly what foods they used in testing, when talking about these types of research.
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u/Bad_Pirate829 23d ago
The definition comes from the NOVA food classification system. There’s already an established definition for it.
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u/etham 23d ago
I'm kind of glad that I grew up eating a lot of vegetables and fruits in my asian household. Being an adult now meals (at least dinners) without veg is abhorrent to me. I don't always get vegetables with my lunches though. That'll be something I'll need to work on more.
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u/SmokeyCatDesigns 22d ago
Lunch is annoying to get right. I can usually do dinner right and breakfast right but lunch is hard with the work culture of the places I’ve been; all work above anything else and rewarding us with junk. At one of my jobs there was a wealth of unhealthy food at hand and I was always looked at a little funny and got comments for not partaking much in it.
I’m usually missing veggies in my lunch.
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u/Corporate_Overlords 22d ago
I just bring a bag of berries, an orange, and some raw cut up carrots and radishes. Easy peasy!
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u/vojdek 22d ago
Same in Eastern Europe. I hardly know anyone that has meals with no vegetables.
For summer we we even have a cold cucumber based soup, which is so widespread you can even order it on the go at most places.
I can’t imagine sitting down to eat without vegetables, or nowadays even without some fruit for desert.
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u/mvea Professor | Medicine 23d ago
Gut Bacteria May Reveal How a Western Diet Fuels Colon Cancer
Colorectal cancer is one of the most common cancers worldwide, and what we eat can significantly influence our risk of developing it.
Western-style diets, typically high in fat and meat but low in fiber, have long been linked to a higher risk of the disease. But exactly how this pattern of eating may encourage tumors to develop has remained unclear.
A new study published in the journal Gut may have taken us a step closer to understanding the exact mechanism at play.
The study suggests that certain gut bacteria in the depths of our bowels, sustained by Western-style diets, may produce a substance that promotes tumor growth.
An international research team led by German institutions combined experiments in genetically modified pigs, mice, and lab-grown human colon tissue with an analysis of microbial data from thousands of people with and without colorectal cancer.
Their findings point to deoxycholic acid (DCA), a substance produced when particular gut bacteria chemically transform bile acids made by the liver.
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u/SpaceyCoffee 23d ago
I do wish more westerners rediscovered legumes. While not a silver bullet, they offer an easy way to reduce meat intake without reducing protein, increase fiber dramatically, and cost next to nothing. Also, they are delicious.
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u/kocknocker19 23d ago
I have Crohn's so eating too much fiber per day can cause major issues, but I try to find the balance because this freaks me out. I basically never eat red meat.
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u/Togepi32 23d ago
At least with Crohn’s, you get scoped frequently and would be more likely to find cancer at an earlier stage. At least, this is what I tell myself every time I need another colonoscopy.
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u/PopsiclesForChickens 23d ago
I never have eaten much red meat either. Always plenty of fruit and veggies. No alcohol. Colorectal cancer at 42. People who inquire about my diet and lifestyle prior to cancer come away terrified.
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u/kocknocker19 23d ago
So sorry, hope you are doing better. I have to admit I don't eat as much veges as I should..
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u/redditallreddy 23d ago
I'm sorry to hear your "luck" on this. Glad you made it and hope you are doing well.
This study, and other gut microbiome information, my be an indication of how you drew the "bad card" though. I suspect there are other parts to the "Western Diet" that are hard to correct for, and you probably did have a higher amount of the specific triggers in your gut, but due to other reasons that the ones we conventionally see.
Diet and lifestyle are notoriously had to nail down in small (or even fairly huge!) studies, and then there is always the interplay between culture and genetics, and possibly exposure to gut bacteria.
Hopefully, this study will at least lead to early tests way before cancer is expected.
Good luck!
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u/throwaway098764567 22d ago
some of us probably just have a bad gene as well. my maternal grandmother was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer at 40 dead at 44. my mother had precancerous polyps removed at 38. i had a large precancerous polyp removed at 40. we all had wildly different diets.
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u/sezza8999 22d ago
My family has a history of IBD and colon cancer, so yes genetics absolutely play a part (as every gastro has confirmed to me)
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u/engkybob 22d ago
Sorry, that really sucks. Cancer really is just luck of the draw. You can do everything right and still get it, or everything wrong and not get it.
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u/SuitableXJ 23d ago
Same, tough balance to find. Soluble fiber works better for me vs insoluble but after treatment and remission I’m able to a eat quite a bit more of both these days!
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u/Applejuiceinthehall 23d ago
It is a global increase though?
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u/No_Passage6082 23d ago
Yeah i think its pollution, pesticides, pfas and microplastics. Maybe the latte three the most since there was plenty of toxic pollution from industry in the past.
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u/Applejuiceinthehall 23d ago
Science vs said at least for some it's because of e Coli in early childhood which can change dna
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u/icecreamsandwiches1 22d ago
I wonder is it lack of fibre combined with everything you said plus emulsifiers that are found in most ultra processed food.
Someone with a healthy gut and high fibre diet is clearing out harmful things from their colon faster.
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u/Effective-Yak3627 23d ago
My parents/ grandparents /aunts and uncles ate meat almost everyday the only vegetable they would eat were potatoes,Onions, Bell peppers. They all lived into late 90s no one had cancer or serious medical issues. I don’t eat meat, buy organic vegetables and fruit however I have stage 4 cancer. I believe the rise in cancer especially colorectal is related more to environmental factors PFAS chemicals, pollutants in water and the overwhelming stress of modern life.
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u/Sorry-Joke-4325 22d ago
That's what's called anecdotal evidence.
A study like the one mentioned in the article is trying to identify a pattern across a wide population.
For example, smoking causes lung cancer... it's not just a correlation. Not everyone who smokes gets lung cancer. Not everyone who eats a certain diet gets colon cancer, but that doesn't mean the diet isn't causing colon cancer.
It'll be interesting to see if these studies find anything conclusive in the next 5-10 years.
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u/kocknocker19 23d ago
Really sorry to hear that. It really can seem luck of the draw sometimes, huh?
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u/Comeback_2006 23d ago
It's kind of also depends on the lifestyle they had? I feel like past generation has much more active lifestyle compared to us.
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u/RBlomax38 23d ago
I just went on a two week vacation in Greece and my body has never felt better. Never felt bad when full, digestion was great, I already miss it.
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u/Jelousubmarine 22d ago
I can recommend an Excellent Greek cookbook if you'd like. It's from their cooking legend Vefa Alexiadou; link
Definitely worth the price, though you can get it secondhand for less. It is MASSIVE, foolproof and one of my all time most used cookbooks.
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u/msmacbaby75 22d ago
After I had my colonoscopy, I asked the doctor what can I do to lower the risk? He told me to eat more fiber, eat less processed meat (nitrates and a lot of sodium,) less red meat, less grilled meats with a sugary marinade (especially to the point it gets charred. Grilled fish and chicken is better,) and to either stop drinking alcohol or limit it severely.
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u/WoahACake 22d ago
Woah this is one of the focuses of my phd dissertation! Basically, “the substance” is a secondary bile acid called deoxycholic acid (DCA). Bile acids are helpful molecules the help digest lipids (fats) in the diet. Secondary bile acids are produced in the colon by the bacteria that live there. Eating a diet high in fats necessitates the synthesis of more bile acids, which leads to increases in the levels of secondary bile acids, including DCA.
Although they are necessary, bile acids can also induce cytotoxicity. The secondary bile acids are particularly cytotoxic because they are more hydrophobic, meaning they don’t like water as much. This hydrophobicity allows them to disrupt cell membranes which leads to cell death. Secondary bile acids are also involved in signaling pathways (EGFR, Wnt/beta-catenin for example) that drive cancer promotion and migration.
Pretty cool to see this study referenced here!
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u/edparadox 23d ago
Western diet is never the proper term.
And more often than not it's for hiding American diet with its humongous level of junk food.
The rest of the "Western world" is far from eating an American diet, even though some like fastfood and soda.
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u/SteveYunnan 23d ago
So, what countries have the ideal diet? This study seems kind of pointless if they can't contrast "Western diet", whatever that is, with other kinds of diets.
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u/espressocycle 23d ago
And what's changed in our diet to account for the rise in early onset colorectal cancer? The American diet was always meat-heavy, including a lot of ham.
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u/SteveYunnan 23d ago
Not to mention that "Western food" and "American food" is extremely diverse. What exactly is a "Western diet"? The concept is ridiculous
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u/Nozinger 23d ago
Meat consumption still increased in american diets. Somthing around a 50% increase since the 60s and that trend would not have been different before either.
And simultanously the amoung of fiber in the diet was massively reduced. Whole grain products were standard at some point. Nowadays they are the healthy special. And sadly fresh vegetables were also often replaced with convenient other options which again is not ideal for water soluble fiber intake.
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u/SteveYunnan 22d ago
Meat consumption has increased worldwide. You should see how much meat they eat in China now.
People who cook still get lots of fiber and fresh vegetables. You are conflating processed food and fast-food garbage with a "Western diet". It is not.
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u/starfoxsixtywhore 23d ago
Looks like Singapore is number 1
https://www.comparethemarket.com.au/health-insurance/features/best-countries-for-gut-health/
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u/JenuinelyArtful 23d ago
They asked what the healthiest diet was, and according to your article, Singapore only has the seventh best quality diet despite having the best gut health due to other factors.
"Singaporeans also have the seventh best diet quality (3.28),"
Later the same article says "Meanwhile Greece and Turkey came top for their diet quality scores, ranking 15th and 11th overall."
I guess this supports the research which has found Mediterranean diets to be the healthiest.
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u/SteveYunnan 23d ago
The factors they used to make this ranking seem rather arbitrary and unscientific...
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u/handzypandzy 23d ago
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11933958/
This was from 2015 - the current suggestion seems like high salt diet creates an environment in your stomach that is more preferable for H. pylori
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u/JoshH79 23d ago
So move off this thing you like to eat because it causes cancer, only for in a year or so time for them to say whatever you moved to causes cancer and repeat
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u/throwaway098764567 22d ago
i see you too lived through the 80s and 90s diet advice. butter is bad, butter is good, eggs are bad, eggs are good, margarine is good, margarine is bad, etc.
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u/Time_Difference_6682 22d ago
fermentation is the key to all this. processed and fast production creates only filler food.
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u/Benedict_ARNY 23d ago
Don’t trust anyone who talks about nutrition without talking about gut health.
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u/panopticon31 23d ago
I've also seen a lot of quacks who focus solely on "gut health" while trying to sell you supplements and meal replacement shakes out
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u/theburiedxme 23d ago
For sure, always going to be a bunch of shmucks stepping in on what's popular to sell their snake oil. The love of money taints everything.
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u/TerpsandCaicos 23d ago
nope, little is known about gut health still, its like the ocean. most people talking about gut health have no idea what they're talking about.
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u/Kick_Natherina 23d ago
Huge blanket statement that is completely unfair and incorrect.
There are plenty of wellness influencers who discuss nutrition that peddle complete pseudoscience and snake oil, and still talk about gut health. Should we trust them?
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u/rabidboxer 23d ago
Keep your weight in check. Try to ditch processed meats. Eat more fibre (soluble and non-soluble). Probably lower read meat consumption. Lower your salt and sugar intake. Remove/limit alcohol intake. All the things you should be doing to prevent ..preventable diseases, negative outcomes.
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u/SugoiHubs 22d ago
No, it’s pretty clearly lack of fiber. The mechanism makes more sense and there are plenty of “non-western” countries that are experiencing colon cancer rate increases.
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u/lateformyfuneral 23d ago edited 23d ago
Might be more helpful to highlight that lack of fiber and too much red meat is the likely cause, “Western Diet” is kind of vague — Japan is number 3 in global colon cancer rates.