Letter From the Editors
One of the questions most frequently asked of cancer doctors after a treatment course has been decided upon is “What should I eat?” In the arena of cancer prevention, this faith that food is the answer to all questions is even more widespread and unshakable. Somewhere, perhaps from our mothers nagging us to “drink your milk, eat the vegetables, have a piece of fruit,” among other dietary admonishments, we have been imbued with the certainty that what we eat has a profound effect on our risk of developing a variety of illnesses, high among them cancer.
How true is this? There does seem to be some evidence to support it, and certainly some specific nutrients or dietary factors are associated with certain specific cancers. However, all of us are aware by now in this media-driven society, that one week we learn that some nutritional factor will be associated with one cancer and the next week another factor with another cancer, and the following week a study will show that neither of them is associated with anything. The data often conflict with each other. The truth of the matter is that diet, among free-living individuals, each one of whom consumes a very heterogeneous diet along with having a very heterogeneous lifestyle, is a very difficult factor to study in terms of its relationship to risk of any given cancer.
As a result, as we stand here today in 2005, despite an enormous amount of interest, an enormous amount of research and energy devoted to the field, an enormous amount of curiosity on the part of the public and researchers, an enormous amount of devotion on the part of people who still follow those maternal dietary admonishments remembered from childhood, we still don’t know a great deal about the real truths about diet, its components, and their impact on our risk of developing cancer.
In this issue of Cancer Prevention, we present some thoughts from Dr. Arthur Schatzkin, Chief of the Nutritional Epidemiology Branch of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and a leading international authority on diet and cancer prevention. We hope that this will help our readers understand the enormous difficulty of precisely defining the relationship between diet and cancer risk. And we continue to work towards solving the puzzle in the very near future.
The Editors
Andrew J. Dannenberg, MD
Henry R. Erle, MD-Roberts Family Professor of Medicine
Weill Medical College of Cornell University
Co-Director
Cancer Prevention Program
Columbia Weill Cornell Cancer Centers
NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital
Alfred I. Neugut, MD, PhD
Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology
Head of Cancer Prevention
Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center
Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and Mailman School of Public Health
Co-Director
Cancer Prevention Program
Columbia Weill Cornell Cancer Centers
NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital
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