Study shows new links between high fat diets, colon cancer

A new study has found how high-fat diets can trigger a molecular cascade of events that leads to intestinal and colon cancer. The findings of the study were published in the journal 'Cell Reports'. For decades, physicians and dieticians have urged people to limit their intake of high-fat foods, citing links to poor health outcomes and some of the leading causes of death in the US, such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Dietary components high in saturated fats such as red meat are thought to be risk factors for colon cancer. Diet is thought to strongly influence the risk of colorectal cancer, and changes in food habits might reduce up to 70 per cent of this cancer burden. Other known epidemiological risk factors are family history, inflammatory bowel disease, smoking and type-2 diabetes. But out of all the risk factors that elevate colon cancer risk, diet is the one environmental and lifestyle factor that may be the easiest to control ---simply by changing people's behaviour and eating habits----if we knew the exact connections.