WAY OF COOKING LINKED TO CANCER-ARE YOU AWARE?

Deep frying, burning or charring foods may produce cancers

Regularly eating burned or charred red meat, similar to that cooked on a grill can increase the chances of pancreatic cancer by 60%, said Padma Shri, Dr. B C Roy National Awardee & DST National Science Communication Awardee, Dr K K Aggarwal, President Heart Care Foundation of India and Honorary Secretary General IMA.

Turning down the heat when grilling, frying, and barbecuing to avoid excess burning or charring of the meat may be a sensible way for some people to lower their risk for getting pancreatic cancer.

As per Dr Kristin Anderson of the University of Minnesota, charred meat contains several known cancer-causing chemicals, including heterocyclic amines.

Heterocyclic amines (HAs) are carcinogens produced by cooking meat and animal protein at high temperatures; metabolism of HA is influenced by polymorphisms in the N-acetyltransferase-2 (NAT-2) gene. Data from a variety of sources suggest that HA may play a role in human carcinogenesis and are liked to many cancers.

Anderson's team started with 62,000 healthy people and documented what they actually did eat. Over nine years, 208 were diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. When divided into five groups based on how much charred meat such as hamburgers they ate, the people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer were far more likely to be in the top two groups.

They found that those who preferred very well-done steak were almost 60 percent more likely to get pancreatic cancer as those who ate steak less well-done or did not eat steak. Those with the highest intake of very well-done meat had a 70 percent higher risk for pancreatic cancer over those with the lowest consumption.

The mutagenic activity and the mass amount of heterocyclic amines responsible for the mutagenic activity have been measured in some cooked foods. Cooked meats are the predominant source of mutagenic activity in the diet with values ranging from 0 to 10,000 revertants per gram reported in the Ames/Salmonella test with strain TA98.

Frying at higher temperatures and for longer times produces the greatest mutagenic response, and thus concomitantly, the largest amounts of heterocyclic amines.

Non-meat products such as baked breads can also form significant mutagenic activity, particularly when overcooked. Commercially prepared hamburgers made from meat substitutes such as tofu, wheat gluten or tempeh and fried at 210 degrees C have up to 10% of the mutagenic activity of a fried beef patty cooked under the same conditions.