Cold potatoes could counter health effects of red meat
- 21:00 06 August 2014 by Anna Williams
Next time you fire up the barbecue, don't forget the potato salad. It could help counter the effects of all that red meat.
People who eat a lot of red meat have a
higher risk of developing colorectal cancer. But previous work has
suggested that a type of starch that doesn't get digested - called resistant starch
- can have a protective effect by raising levels of a chemical that
dampens some of the genetic changes that precede such cancers .
In the first, small human trial, Karen Humphreys and her colleagues from Flinders University,
Adelaide, Australia, gave 23 healthy volunteers a high red-meat diet
for four weeks. They then took cell samples from the volunteers' guts.
These showed an increase in the number of micro RNA molecules - short
lengths of genetic material that can silence genes - called miR17-92 and
miR21. These elevated micro RNAs are associated with the survival and
growth of colorectal cancer cells, and with poorer outcomes for people
with that type of cancer.
Next they gave the same volunteers the
same diet for another month , but this time supplemented with resistant
starch. This is found in foods including cooked potato that has been
left to cool, and bananas, though the researchers gave it in the form of a drink.
After this time, cell samples showed that
the volunteers' levels of miR17-92 had, on average, reverted to their
original level before the high red-meat diet was introduced. The
starch-supplemented diet had no impact on the levels of miR21.
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