Is Food killing Us?
From earliest time people have been aware that some plants are poisonous and should be avoided as food. Other plants contain chemicals that have medicinal, stimulatory, hallucinatory, or narcotic effects. In the past 50 years, great strides have been made in understanding nutrition and the role it plays in human health. Federal agencies, such as the Food and Drug Administration, Department of Agriculture, and Enviromental Protection Agency, as well as many state and local agencies, are charged with interpreting and enforcing laws dealing with the safety of the food we eat and the water we drink. The food supply in the United States is widely recognized as safe, economical, and of high quality, variety, and abundance. Despite these efforts, concerns remain that some dietary components may contribute to the problem of cancer in humans. Cancer-causing chemicals that occur naturally in foods are far more numerous in the human diet than synthetic carcinogens, yet both types are consumed at levels so low that they currently appear to pose little threat to human health. The greater cancer threat in the human diet today comes not from minor chemicals in food, but from diets too rich in calories and fats, or alcohol. (NRC Report 1)
potential to cause cancer, comparing the risk they pose to the risk from synthetic carcinogens. After assessing the data on more than 200 known carcinogens in food, including 65 naturally occurring substances, the tests determined that both chemicals appear to cause cancer in similar ways and can be evaluated in the lab. Additional proof should be based on knowledge of known carcinogens and anitcarcinogens. For example, naturally occurring chemicals could also be accorded a higher priority for testing if they fall in the same chemical class as known chemical carcinogens, contain chemical groups also found in carcinogens, and are likely, based on structural comparisons with known chemicals, to be unusually stable. Researchers lack sufficient knowledge about human exposure levels, about the ways chemicals induce or prevent cancer in humans, and about the concentrations of specific natural chemicals in food. More naturally occurring chemicals should be tested on and individual basis for their ability to cause cancer. Only of a small fraction of the perhaps one million food chemicals that occur naturally have been tested so far, and some even have been shown to help prevent cancer. Consume as little prepared food and as much fruit
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Approximate Word count = 838
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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