Want to prevent cancer? ... eat better and exercise more, study says.
A QUARTER of cancers could be prevented by 2025 through diet and exercise, saving hundreds of millions of dollars in the cost of treatment, a report in the Medical Journal of Australia has found.
Taking data on projected illness, and coupling it with published findings on the association between food, nutrition and physical activity in the prevention of cancer, the journal study found the incidence of cancer in Australia would rise to 170,000 in the next 13 years, an increase of 60 per cent since 2007. Intervention to improve health and environmental factors could reduce that by 43,000 or 25 per cent, it said in a report to be published today.
Contributing factors in the nation's poor health include an increasingly sedentary lifestyle, the prevalence of overweight and obese adults, climbing rates of harmful alcohol consumption, and an unbalanced diet.
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Pip Youl, one of the authors and the head of research at Cancer Council Queensland, said that fewer than 10 per cent of Australians ate the recommended five serves of vegetables a day and only 6 per cent ate two or more serves of fruit a day.
''Ways to encourage better eating are things like improving the number of whole-grain cereals and bread, choosing foods that are low in salt, choosing a low-fat diet, particularly diets that are low in saturated fats.
''One of the key things is teaching children to eat healthily. So getting them interested in cooking and eating healthy foods, and that will give them a really good start in life.''
Poor health had become an economic and geographic issue. The study suggested that ''inequities in cancer outcomes varied with remoteness or area disadvantage'' and that ''increasingly the poor are becoming obese faster than the rich''.
With healthy food costing more than high-sugar, fat-soaked, nutritionally poor alternatives, Australians on lower incomes are more likely to make unhealthy food choices. Programs needed to be designed to accommodate different needs in different regions, Ms Youl said.
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Better diet, exercise can cut cancer by one quarter
