Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 7, 1990 TAG: 9006070093
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
A lack of exercise and lots of rich American foods containing saturated fats make the difference, said Alice S. Whittemore of Stanford University.
"If you want to avoid the disease, I would by all means stay active," she said in a telephone interview. "Even more importantly, take it easy on rich, high-fat dairy products and very fatty red meat. Eating fish and chicken is certainly prudent."
The study, published this week in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, is based on interviews with Chinese in the People's Republic of China and with Chinese-Americans who immigrated to the United States or whose parents immigrated.
About 90 percent of the Chinese-Americans interviewed came to the United States as young adults.
Of those chosen for interviews, 473 Americans and 432 Chinese had either colon or rectal cancer. The researchers also interviewed 1,192 Chinese-Americans and 1,295 people in China who were free of disease but who lived near those with the cancers.
The interviews probed diet, exercise and other habits of all the subjects.
Chinese-American men, who had four to seven times more colon or rectal cancer than men of the same age in the People's Republic of China, got less exercise and were more likely to eat high quantities of food rich in animal or dairy fat.
The colorectal cancer rates among the Chinese-American men are about the same as among white American men, Whittemore said.
Whittemore said the Chinese also eat more vegetables than Americans and that, to some degree, seemed to help block the formation of the cancers.
by CNB