a225  1359  19 Feb 90
AM-Food-Dangers, Bjt,0625
98 Percent of Cancer Risk in Diet from Ordinary Foods, Scientist Says
By DANIEL Q. HANEY
AP Science Writer
    NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Natural carcinogens in meat, grain and other
foods are a far greater danger than pesticides and additives,
accounting for more than 98 percent of the cancer risk in the diet, a
government scientist said Monday.
    Even a minor reduction in these naturally occurring hazards, he
said, would surpass the benefits of eliminating all traces of
dangerous manmade chemicals.
    The culprits include not only such recognized health hazards as fats
and beer but such seemingly innocent products as bread, yogurt,
mushrooms and many spices, including cinnamon and nutmeg.
    ''The risk is from natural carcinogens in the diet, because they
overwhelm all the others,'' said Dr. Robert J. Scheuplein, director
of the Office of Toxicological Sciences at the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration.
    He contended that the public is worried about the wrong risks in
their diet, in part because of exaggerated news accounts of such
scares as Alar in apples, cyanide in grapes and dioxin in milk.
    Scheuplein based his conclusions on a statistical analysis of the
quantity of cancer-causing agents in the diet.
    He said that the risk of dying from cancer from dietary exposure to
both natural and manmade carcinogens, or cancer-inducing substances,
was 7.7 percent. The risk from naturally occurring carcinogens alone
was 7.6 percent.
    ''Most of the risks are people's personal choices,'' Scheuplein
said. ''They are not imposed on people by corporations. Apparently
that's a hard lesson. People want to blame somebody.''
    Scheuplein presented his findings at a meeting of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science.
    Dr. Frank Young, a former FDA commissioner who is now deputy
assistant secretary of Health and Human Services, said he agreed with
Scheuplein's contention.
    ''The headline should not be, 'All Foods Cause Cancer' or 'Drop
Dead. Don't Eat,''' Young said. ''The good news is, let us not as a
nation focus just on the technological food additives. We ought to
focus on the big issues as well.''
    Scheuplein said the clearest cancer-causing agent in ordinary food
is fat, which has been linked with several kinds of tumors. However,
he said most foods now eaten would not pass safety tests required for
new food chemicals and additives.
    He estimated that carcinogens make up one-tenth of 1 percent of the
food people eat. Among concerns he cited were:
    -Well-cooked, high-protein foods, such as meat and eggs, contain
bacterial substances that can cause genetic mutations. An ordinary
day's protein can be as damaging to the genes as five cigarettes.
    -Hazardous urethane is a natural product of fermentation. It is
present in beer, yogurt, bread and other foods.
    -Mycotoxins produced by molds are common in many foods, especially
when stored in warm, humid conditions. Aflatoxins occur in corn and
peanuts, zearalenone in soybeans and luteoskyrin in yellow rice.
    -Smoked or salted fish and pickled vegetables may cause digestive
cancers. This is attributed to nitrates and funguses.
    -Grilling and charring fish or meat can produce potentially
hazardous substances, such as nitropyrenes.
    -Many spices contain questionable substances. There is estragole in
tarragon, eugenal in cloves, cinnamaldehyde in cinnamon, myristicin
in nutmeg and anethole in fennel. Several spices, including oregano,
marjoram and bay leaves, may cause genetic damage.
    -Other naturally occurring carcinogens include d-limonene in
oranges, psoralens in celery, hydrazines in mushrooms and nitrates in
spinach.
    ''Even a modestly effective attempt to lessen the dietary risk of
natural carcinogens would probably be enormously more useful to human
health than regulatory efforts devoted to eliminating traces of
pesticide residues or other specific trace-level chemicals,''
Scheuplein said.
    
 
AP-NY-02-19-90 1644EST
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