Research into nutrition and disease is complicated. You simply cannot expose people to something that may increase the risk of cancer for long. Yet, partly thanks to research by Maastricht UMC+, we know more about how soft drinks can increase the risk of colon cancer.
By: Mirjam BedafIt has been known for some time that, in addition to red meat and too little dietary fiber, consuming sugary soft drinks also increases the risk of colon cancer. This is evident from the American Nurses’ Health Study. “But it remains difficult to demonstrate a causal relationship in nutritional research,” says Ellen Kampman, professor of Nutrition and Disease at Wageningen University & Research.
“People who drink soft drinks may also have other unhealthy lifestyles, which could explain the link with colon cancer. For example, being overweight or exercising little.”
confounding factors
Scientists try to correct these confounding factors as best they can when analyzing their research data, but we don’t know whether it’s the many calories you get from sodas with added sugars or whether it’s due to the sugar (fructose) in the soda. . To find out more about the link between sugar and colorectal cancer, researchers at Maastricht UMC+ took a different approach.
The researchers looked at people who naturally process fructose slightly less well. “These people urinate more fructose than others and absorb less fructose in their intestines,” said Martijn Brouwers, professor of internal medicine at Maastricht University. “This applies to 30 to 40 percent of the Dutch.”
The big advantage of this way of doing research is that you are much less bothered by the other behavior – the disruptive factors – and you can look specifically at this sugar.
Studying these people made it possible to look very specifically at the role of sugar in the development of colon cancer. And it turned out: this group of people had a lower risk of getting colon cancer.
“The big advantage of this way of doing research is that you are much less bothered by the other behavior – the confounding factors – and can look specifically at this sugar. People who pass out more fructose will probably eat as much meat on average as the people who don’t do that,” explains Brouwers.
“People who pass out more fructose apparently have a little bit of natural protection against developing colon cancer. For example, we all have a mix of innate traits that slightly increases or decreases the risk of one condition.”
To establish a causal relationship, you would have to expose a large group of people to soft drinks for a long time and another large group not, and follow both groups until they develop colorectal cancer. Of course that will never happen.
Kampman: “The Maastricht analysis is a way in which a causal relationship becomes clearer and through which we have learned more about the mechanism behind the connection. The disadvantage, I think, is that we do not know how much soft drink the participants drank. clear when the entire study is published.”
Consume little added sugars
Every study has advantages and disadvantages. The interesting thing about the American study is that it looked at people who get colon cancer at a younger age (40-50 years). That is happening more and more. “We often think of a hereditary form in younger people with cancer. But soft drinks also appear to play a role in people who get colon cancer at a younger age,” says Kampman.
Moderating sugar consumption has been one of the recommendations for cancer prevention for years. Kampman and Brouwers therefore fully support the government’s plans to introduce a sugar tax.
Brouwers: “The consumption of added sugar in our country, and also in other Western countries, is high, especially among young people. Sugar has been added to many types of processed food, including soft drinks. It is important to limit the consumption of added sugar, to prevent health problems such as colon cancer.”