New research indicates a potentially significant and surprising reason why eating foods frequently cooked at high temperatures, like red meat and deep-fried foods, increases cancer risk.
The suspected culprit? The DNA in the food that gets damaged by the cooking process.
The study shows that components of heat-damaged DNA can be absorbed during digestion and then incorporated into the consumer’s own DNA.
This process places damaged material directly into our DNA, potentially triggering genetic mutations that can lead to cancer and other diseases.
The research, currently conducted in lab-grown cells and mice, is still in its early stages for human implications. However, these findings could eventually impact dietary choices and public health.
The Potential Genetic Risk
Earlier studies have linked the consumption of charred and fried foods to DNA damage. They usually attribute the harm to specific small molecules that form reactive species in the body.
But, as Eric Kool, a professor of chemistry at Stanford University and the senior author of this study points out, these molecules are many thousand times less common than DNA in food.
Kool’s team suggests that the damaged DNA from food may be a more significant source of harm.
During digestion, the damaged DNA can be broken down and its components incorporated into our own DNA. This creates a potential and significant pathway for damaged food DNA to harm our own DNA.
DNA In Your Food
Most people don’t realize that the foods we eat contain DNA from the organisms they come from. And these amounts aren’t insignificant.
For example, a 500-gram beef steak contains over a gram of cow DNA. Therefore, our exposure to potentially heat-damaged DNA could also be significant.
The Research Process and Findings
The researchers cooked different foods (ground beef, ground pork, and potatoes) by boiling them or roasting them at mild temperatures.
They then extracted DNA from these foods and sent the samples for analysis. All three foods exhibited DNA damage when boiled and roasted, with higher temperatures increasing DNA damage.
When the heat-damaged DNA components were fed to lab-grown cells and mice, the lab-grown cells showed significant DNA damage resulting from taking up heat-damaged DNA components.
The mice showed DNA damage in the cells lining their small intestine, where food digestion takes place.
Looking Forward
The research team plans to further explore these findings, testing a broader variety of foods and different cooking methods.
They also aim to examine the long-term exposure to heat-damaged DNA expected in typical human diets, rather than the high doses administered in this study.
The study raises many questions about an unexplored, yet possibly significant chronic health risk from eating foods prepared with high heat.
More research is needed to understand these initial findings fully and their potential implications for human health.
If you care about cancer, please read studies that a low-carb diet could increase overall cancer risk, and vitamin D supplements could strongly reduce cancer death.
For more information about health, please see recent studies about how drinking milk affects the risks of heart disease and cancer and results showing dairy foods may increase men’s risk of prostate cancer.
The study was published in ACS Central Science.
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