14 DAY TRIAL // They say "Good wine, long life!"
But a new research at Queen's University points out the fact that the notion of "natural" foods may hide a high risk for cancer.
Actually, some common foods and alcoholic beverages like wine, cheese, yogurt and bread present some minute levels of carcinogens (cancer inducing compounds) and a balanced varied diet is a better choice.
The team discovered that a naturally-occurring carcinogen, vinyl carbamate, from alcoholic beverages and fermented foods provokes DNA mutations, that translate to abnormal cell growth and lung cancer; but that also shows a garlic compound significantly decreases these changes.
Vinyl carbamate is a derived of ethyl carbamate (urethane), a by-product of fermentation encountered in alcoholic beverages, and fermented foods like cheese, yogurt and bread but also in tobacco.
The substance is now characterized as a potential human carcinogen by both the World Health Organization and the International Agency for Research on Cancer, but urethane was given inadvertently to millions of Japanese patients, between 1950 and 1975, in analgesic and sedative drugs.
It is thought that the total dose of urethane administered to a 60-kilogram patient was roughly 0.6 to 3.0 grams, the largest dose on record of a pure carcinogen delivered directly to people.
In 1985, Health and Welfare Canada imposed limits on the urethane contained in Canadian alcoholic beverages, but not in the imported ones. "The problem is how to regulate the levels in imported goods," said lead researcher Dr. Poh-Gek Forkert of Queen's Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology.
The research team administered to mice a single high dose of the carcinogenic chemical, whilst human exposure is over long periods, perhaps over a lifetime, in lower amounts. "We believe that people should not be apprehensive about consuming these foods and beverages: if consumed at low levels, they probably don't pose a risk. It might be prudent, however, to have a varied diet and to limit drinking certain alcoholic beverages. And include garlic!" said Dr. Forkert.