How low-quality foods are feeding cancer

Food is more plentiful than ever. You have every food you could ever imagine at your fingertips.

Just drive to the grocery store… pick up the phone… or place an online order and you can fulfill any craving almost instantly.

But here’s the problem…

Even though we have access to insane amounts of food (and based on obesity rates, most of us are taking advantage of it), we’re still not getting enough nutrients. We’re overfed and undernourished.

Why?

Because we’re choosing foods with low nutritional quality. This includes foods like potato chips, soda, candy, and refined flour, which are high in calories but low in nutrients.

Unfortunately, this has serious consequences for our health. In fact, a new study shows these low-nutrient foods could be causing the cancer epidemic.

The lower the nutrient content, the higher the cancer risk

A new study from researchers at the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research shows that nutrient-poor foods are putting you at risk for cancer.

Researchers looked at the diets of 471,495 adults who participated in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition, a study that collected data from people in 10 European countries between 1992 and 1999.

They ranked the foods participants ate using the British Food Standards Agency nutrient profiling system, which calculates a score based on how much energy, sugar, saturated fatty acid, sodium, fiber, protein, fruit, and vegetables a food contains in every 100 grams.

Roughly 15 years after they collected information about diet, researchers followed up to check on participants’ health. Here’s what they found:

• People who ate the most foods with low nutritional quality had a higher overall cancer risk.
• Men who ate the most foods with a low nutritional quality had a higher risk of colorectal cancer, cancer of the upper digestive tract and respiratory tract, stomach cancer, and lung cancer.
• Women who ate the most foods with low nutritional quality had a higher risk of liver cancer and postmenopausal breast cancer.

What does all this mean for you?

That it’s time to take a closer look at the nutrient content of your food.

Counting your nutrients to fend off cancer

Tracking the nutrient value of everything you eat may sound daunting. But it’s not so bad if you think about it this way…

Whole foods are nutrient dense. Processed foods not so much. Just choose the whole stuff over the prepackaged stuff and you’ll be on the right track.

If you really want to pack as many nutrients on your plate as possible (and lower your cancer risk while you’re at it), then eat plenty of these nutritional powerhouses:

• Salmon
• Spinach
• Broccoli
• Kale
• Sweet potatoes
• Brussels Sprouts
• Seaweed
• Asparagus
• Almonds
• Garlic
• Lentils
• Turnip greens
• Shellfish
• Cauliflower
• Potatoes
• Sunflower seeds
• Liver
• Raspberries
• Sardines
• Strawberries
• Blueberries
• Black beans
• Bok choy
• Eggs
• Tomatoes
• Mushrooms
• Dark Chocolate

In fact, why don’t you just use this as your cancer-fighting shopping list? There are plenty of delicious dishes you can make with these nutrient-rich foods. They may not be as mouthwatering as potato chips and white bread at first. But you’ll feel so much better when you feed your body the nutrients it needs that you’ll never go back to those nasty, nutrient-poor foods again.