Dietary factors, second only to tobacco as a preventable cause of cancer, account for about 30 percent of all cancers in Western countries and approximately 20 percent in developing countries. Announcing findings in 2005 of its twenty-year-long study tracking 150,000 Americans, the American Cancer Society found that men and women who ate the most amounts of red meat (compared with those who ate more poultry, fish, and non-meats) had a 53 percent higher risk of distal colon cancer.
Also in 2005, a study by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health, in which 1 million Koreans were tracked for ten years, reported that high sugar consumption could be a risk factor in developing several types of cancer. These researchers suggest that glucose intolerance may be one way that obesity increases cancer risk and that rising obesity rates may increase future cancer rates.
“More than 11 million people are diagnosed with cancer every year. It is estimated that there will be 16 million new cases every year by 2020.”
--World Health Organization
