Fatty Acid Found In Palm Oil Linked To Spread of Cancer (theguardian.com) 93
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Scientists have shown how a fatty acid found in palm oil can encourage the spread of cancer, in work that could pave the way for new treatments. The study, on mice, found that palmitic acid promoted metastasis in mouth and skin cancers. In future, this process could be targeted with drugs or carefully designed eating plans, but the team behind the work cautioned against patients putting themselves on diets in the absence of clinical trials. The study adds to emerging evidence that diet can be used to enhance existing cancer treatments because certain nutrients are disproportionately relied on by tumor cells, or are required at critical stages such as metastasis.
The study built on previous work by the same team showing that, within a tumor, just a small subset of cells have the capacity to spread by traveling out of the tumor, reaching other organs and colonizing them. These specialized cancer cells appeared to rely particularly heavily on fatty acids and the latest work narrowed this down to palmitic acid, which is found in palm oil -- but also in a wide variety of foods such as butter and olive oil. The study, published in Nature, found that when palmitic acid was supplemented into the diet of mice, mouth and skin cancers were more likely to spread. Other fatty acids called oleic acid and linoleic acid -- omega-9 and omega-6 fats found in foods such as olive oil and flaxseeds -- did not show the same effect. Neither of the fatty acids tested increased the risk of developing cancer in the first place. The study suggested that exposure to palmitic acid caused changes to the function of genes in cancer cells that allowed them to sense fatty acids and consume them more efficiently. The presence of palmitic acid also appeared to send cancer cells into a "regenerative state" allowing them to form signaling networks beyond the tumor, which is known to be a crucial step towards spreading.
The study built on previous work by the same team showing that, within a tumor, just a small subset of cells have the capacity to spread by traveling out of the tumor, reaching other organs and colonizing them. These specialized cancer cells appeared to rely particularly heavily on fatty acids and the latest work narrowed this down to palmitic acid, which is found in palm oil -- but also in a wide variety of foods such as butter and olive oil. The study, published in Nature, found that when palmitic acid was supplemented into the diet of mice, mouth and skin cancers were more likely to spread. Other fatty acids called oleic acid and linoleic acid -- omega-9 and omega-6 fats found in foods such as olive oil and flaxseeds -- did not show the same effect. Neither of the fatty acids tested increased the risk of developing cancer in the first place. The study suggested that exposure to palmitic acid caused changes to the function of genes in cancer cells that allowed them to sense fatty acids and consume them more efficiently. The presence of palmitic acid also appeared to send cancer cells into a "regenerative state" allowing them to form signaling networks beyond the tumor, which is known to be a crucial step towards spreading.
Stick to .. (Score:4, Funny)
We need to prevent the diversion my motor vehicle fuel for use as food. The nerve of some people ...
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That's essentially the conclusion they warned you not to jump to.
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And that's exactly how MSM use headline to lie and mislead. Why don't you propose the same for butter and olive oil too?
Even in the summary it included this: "also in a wide variety of foods such as butter and olive oil"
More telling is the omission of olive oil in the headline, olive oil was lauded as "more healthy" in many new diets.
Re:Stick to .. (Score:4, Informative)
From Wikipedia:
Palmitic acid, or hexadecanoic acid in IUPAC nomenclature, is the most common saturated fatty acid found in animals, plants and microorganisms...The word "napalm" is derived from the words naphthenic acid and palmitic acid.
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And what does that have to do with the headline "Fatty Acid Found In Palm Oil"?
That the headline did not use the word "palmitic acid" only strengthened my point, this piece was designed intentionally to point attention to only palm oil. Perhaps one can follow the money to find out why.
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I was providing evidence to support your point that singling out palm oil isn't justified.
Re:Stick to .. (Score:4, Informative)
From Wikipedia:
And what does that have to do with the headline "Fatty Acid Found In Palm Oil"?
That the headline did not use the word "palmitic acid" only strengthened my point, this piece was designed intentionally to point attention to only palm oil. Perhaps one can follow the money to find out why.
I was providing evidence to support your point that singling out palm oil isn't justified.
Dude, Palmitic acid is the principal constituent of refined palm oil, the stuff is 45-50% palmitic acid and people tend to consume large quantities of palm oil in products where it is used. By comparison canola oil has only around 5% palmitic acids (both are favourites for deep frying). So if this is study is right, and I see no reason to dismiss it out of hand, if you lather your food in palm oil or something else high in palmitic acid and if you eat lots of food that contains palmitic acid, you are basically nourishing cancer cells. Thus there is a major benefit to be had from eliminating large quantities of high palmitic acid bearing foods from your diet and eating smaller quantities of lean meat, whether or not your family has a history of cancer. Same if you are overweight. There is a known statistical link between obesity and higher cancer risk. Obesity has been linked to 13 types of cancer that make up 40% of all cancers diagnosed in the US which makes sense in the light of the results of this study.
Re:Stick to .. (Score:4, Informative)
Your body creates palmitic acid, quite a bit of it. Even if you're slender! What are you going to do about that?
So if this is study is right, and I see no reason to dismiss it out of hand, if you lather your food in palm oil or something else high in palmitic acid and if you eat lots of food that contains palmitic acid, you are basically nourishing cancer cells.
This is the kind of conclusion that the study authors warned against. It's right in the summary! Thus I conclude that you're not thinking/reading.
There is a known statistical link between obesity and higher cancer risk. Obesity has been linked to 13 types of cancer that make up 40% of all cancers diagnosed in the US
ok, now you are on a completely different topic. The study isn't even about cancer risk, it's about how cancer metastasizes. But you didn't read the summary.
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Do! Why should I read the summary, when I just can follow your comments?
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This is the kind of conclusion that the study authors warned against. It's right in the summary!
I see nothing in Slashdot's summary that warns against that conclusion.
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It's there, read carefully:
"the team behind the work cautioned against patients putting themselves on diets"
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I don't know about the specifics here so maybe there's no difference, but there can be a difference between your body making e.g. a little bit of something all the time vs. dumping in a whole bunch at once.
Just because your body makes it doesn't mean adding more won't have significant effects.
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Yeah maybe, but you can't rely on this study to support that conclusion, like the gp did.
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While most of your post is on target, much of the risk from cancer is in metastasis. If it stays put, there's a decent chance of a surgical cure. Much of the ongoing chemo and monitoring after cancer surgery is to catch new tumors from where cancer cells metastasized.
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I was providing evidence to support your point that singling out palm oil isn't justified.
most sources i could find(*) show that palm oil has far bigger concentration than any other source. i'ts around 40gr/100gr, whereas the next offenders are butter and lard with around 20gr in 100gr, cheese and eggs with a bit under 10gr/100gr while all other sources are below 3gr/100gr. olive oil isn't even mentioned.
i guess it isn't called palmitic acid by coincidence.
i don't need to make any "dietary changes" as a result of reading this article because i have been avoiding processed foods for a while now,
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More telling is the omission of olive oil in the headline, olive oil was lauded as "more healthy" in many new diets.
Because while there may be more palmitic acid in butter and people tend to eat much more butter (dairy and animal fats) than palm oil and olive oil ... there's a third to half of palmitic acid in olive oil.
Re:Stick to .. (Score:4, Informative)
1. This study was conducted in rodents. Rodents with a predisposition to developing cancer. That makes them useful for understanding pathways, but not so much for drawing useful inferences about what humans should do to mitigate their risk of cancer. After all, we are not rodents, we do not have a predisposition to developing mouth cancers, we are not eating diets saturated in palm oil, and our bodies synthesize palmitate naturally. The summary rightly cautions about over interpretation of the results.
2. It should be no surprise that a highly energy dense fatty acid would be linked to growth and spread of cancer cells. After all, those activities require extra energy, in cells that are already more metabolically active than they are supposed to be, so responding to energy is to be expected
3. Diet by cancer risk interactions are incredibly complex and nuanced, so no single trial - even if it had been run in humans, using normal levels of palmitic acid intake - would be enough to base decisions on without corroboration through replication and pathway elucidation.
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I had a rather long argument with a woman from HS on Facebook (before I learned better about arguing with old classmates, and stopped using Facebook at all) in which she basically claimed the stuff was magical. This despite her being an RN, and my being a PhD nutritionists. At the time I believed that she should have known better than to believe that shit, and my education would trump hers in that situation regardle
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Olive oil is only a "healthy fat" in so far as it replaces what's worse, namely animal fats (and to a lesser extent palm and coconut, etc).
The human body has zero requirement for dietary saturated fat and it's objectively harmful, linearly.
Monounsaturated fat (abundant in olive oil) is also unnecessary in the human diet, though less harmful.
Polyunsaturated fats (n3 and n6 in particular) are essential.
Are you surprised that food processors have actively and morbidly confused average consumers?
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There are only a few fats we need (certain n3 and n6 fats, as you correctly
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And that's exactly how MSM use headline to lie and mislead.
What does Microsoft Service Manager have to do with anything in this discussion?
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By MSM, are you meaning Fox? https://www.forbes.com/sites/m... [forbes.com]
Re: Stick to .. (Score:2)
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Solves the cancer problem but not the palm oil is environmentally shitty problem. Nobody should be using palm oil at all for food as it's a garbage fat, and producing enough to be useful for biofuels inherently means doing ecological damage.
Seems a rehash (Score:2)
It's everywhere (Score:5, Interesting)
No need to throw shade on palms - palmitic acid is a major component of saturated fats of any kind.
Here is a sample list: http://web.pdx.edu/~wamserc/C336S12/fat.pdf
Sure, palm oil has more, but beef, butter, pork fat all have amounts about as high (and higher in terms of total intake considering our consumption). Even "healthy" oils like olive contain a decent amount of it.
So, if you want to avoid it - will need to stop eating all meat and anything with fat in it. Vegan diet without oil ain't easy.
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Canola oil seems to have less than a third of palm oil compared to olive oil.
Generally the food religion is opposed to canola oil, but as is typical of just about every claim they make, their claims against canola oil are basically BS.
Re: It's everywhere (Score:2)
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Should I transfer my money into coconut water stocks, or one of the other things I saw spruiked on social media?
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Strange, never heard about anti Canola oil propaganda ... :P
But I don't like the taste anyway
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> But I don't like the taste anyway
It's the high Omega-3's in canola that make it taste unusual. Also why it's the least-bad vegetable oil for you.
If you use it for cooking you'll never notice - use walnut or sesame or avocado for salads if you use dressing (where you'll taste it).
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For dressings I only use olive oil.
For cooking meat (no idea why it is called cooking - it is *frying in the pan* !) I use Safflower oil.
Walnut etc. are interesting for certain salads, though, but I don't use it often enough to keep it in the kitchen it would spoil before used up.
Sesame is nice for kinds of grilled meat, Satee etc. But also some salads.
Avocado actually I did no use since a decade or more, thanks for the reminder.
The bonus of palm oil is, it is quite resisting to pick up taste from the food
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Re:It's everywhere (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, yer friggin body makes it [wikipedia.org] from carbohydrates. Same deal with cholesterol. Your body makes bad things, but it's not futile. There's evidence that refined sugar, or really excess sugar of any kind is what really jacks up your triglycerides which is not the same thing exactly, but it's all lipids and it doesn't work the way some people think it does. You can prevent your body from having excesses of these things, but limiting consumption of the thing itself is a red herring. Don't spike your body with refined sugar all in one big rush, eat things that release the sugar slowly. Don't drink too much. Burn these things off with exercise. Some of it's common sense, some of it isn't.
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Same deal with cholesterol. Your body makes bad things
Cholesterol isn't a bad thing. It is a crucial component of our cell walls.
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Sugar and salt aren't a bad thing either, it's too much that is the problem.
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It's not about too much cholesterol, your body makes as much as it needs. It causes problems when the cholesterol transportation system in your body gets un-synchronized.
Re: It's everywhere (Score:2)
No. Sugar IS bad. Sucrose is half glucose half fructose. And fructose is entirely metabolized by your liver. Like how an alcoholic over-uses their liver. Your body is capable of breaking down carbs for energy and does not "need" sugar. Most people eat many multiples of the recommended max of sugar. Every day.
Re: It's everywhere (Score:3)
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They way I've heard this described is that the liver prioritizes alcohol. It's like, "OMG. Poison. Drop everything, we need to fix this". So the liver goes to work, but the lipids it would ordinarily process aren't being handled so the body is like, "Let's just store those here for now. The belly looks like a good place".
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I know someone who had an aggressive cancer that stays in remission so long as she consumes NO carbs. Butter is fine. Meat is fine. Pizza once a week was enough to make the cancer start moving around again. Dropped the pizza and it went back to sleep.
So now I'm wondering if the real problem is in the conversion from carbs to fatty acid, rather than in the fatty acid itself.
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It's also a major component of human breast milk.
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44% of palm oil is palmitic acid, true. But 50-60% of meat, cheese, butter and other dairy products.
TFWA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Ref: Gianfranca Carta; Elisabetta Murru; Sebastiano Banni; Claudia Manca (8 November 2017). "Palmitic Acid: Physiological Role, Metabolism and Nutritional Implications". Frontiers in Physiology. 8: 902. doi:10.3389/FPHYS.2017.00902. ISSN 1664-042X. PMC 5682332. PMID 29167646. Wikidata Q46799280.
Palmitic acid (PA) is the most common saturated fatty acid accounting for 20
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same calculation with palm. It's just that isolated palm oil is 100% fat by definition. The animal equivalent is lard.
Re: It's everywhere (Score:2)
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So, if you want to avoid it - will need to stop eating all meat and anything with fat in it.
Not sure that is a viable path, because essentials omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids would be missing in the diet.
Now only to find a way to patent it and sell it. (Score:2)
That is how researcher roll these days.
Just like some Dutch scientists found that baking powder could be used for cancer treatment but they could not find a way to patent it.
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No one wants to patent a substance for making tumors metastasize. That's a bad thing.
Re: Cancer is the future (Score:2)
Re: Cancer is the future (Score:2)
This is perfect fodder... (Score:1)
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...for the Twitter account "justsaysinmice." Mice (as opposed to rats) are herbivores, not omnivores, and have a wholly different kind of metabolism than humans. If this research result is replicated in primates, then it's worth raising an eyebrow about, not before.
Mice lie and monkeys exaggerate. Also the link to the original paper in the summary and Guardian article appears to be broken but is https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com]
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Sheep never lie. That's how you always know that the sweater you got for your spouse really is virgin wool. Don't ever trust that a garment is made from virgin goat hair. Goats are notorious liars. Thank you Dr. Science. He knows more than you do.
Homeopath's ENGAGE! (Score:3)
These are perfect homeopathy-friendly circumstances. Buy one packet of ramen, dilute the palm oil in it until you have 8 swimming pools (standard measure, olympic-size) of it, insinuate that it cures cancer, and make a fortune.
Link to 10.x.x.x ? Seriously? (Score:2)
Obligatory http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20010523 [userfriendly.org]
Finally, something there (Score:3)
...won't be a shortage of, after news gets around.
But it's natural (Score:3)
We're constantly told the false BS that organic/natural is good. I mean have those idiots pushing that feel-good BS never heard of hemlock? Watch wildlife predator/prey interaction and see how much nature gives a shit about suffering or anything like that. It is fucking brutal, FFS .. I'm saying nature is out to kill us. Did it care about the dinosaurs or the saber tooth tiger? No. Why would "nature" care about humans more than a cockroach? Nature didn't stop humans from extinctifying the dodo bird. Why would it stop something else from bumping us off? Fuck that. We need to figure out total chemical/enzymatic food synthesis, not deal with natural crap. Do you know how many toxins are in plants that the liver has to deal with? It's better we rid our dependency on plants and animals for food. Let nature be, and we'll synthesize or food. No need to destroy plants or animals to live.
Re: But it's natural (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: But it's natural (Score:2)
That's called the food religion. Anybody who promotes organic food or argues that something being natural is better is a member of the food religion.
Interesting news: backs up previous research (Score:3, Informative)
The article presents interesting news:
Fatty acid found in palm oil linked to spread of cancer
https://www.theguardian.com/so... [theguardian.com]
The study built on previous work by the same team showing that, within a tumour, just a small subset of cells have the capacity to spread by travelling out of the tumour, reaching other organs and colonising them. These specialised cancer cells appeared to rely particularly heavily on fatty acids and the latest work narrowed this down to palmitic acid, which is found in palm oil – but also in a wide variety of foods such as butter and olive oil.
The study, published in Nature, found that when palmitic acid was supplemented into the diet of mice, mouth and skin cancers were more likely to spread. Other fatty acids called oleic acid and linoleic acid – omega-9 and omega-6 fats found in foods such as olive oil and flaxseeds – did not show the same effect. Neither of the fatty acids tested increased the risk of developing cancer in the first place.
This is an interesting finding because civilization is awash in oil, particularly palm oil. This substantiates the poor reputation palm oil has -- compared to olive (better than palm) or flaxseed oil (best).
But ultimately, it backs up what T. Colin Campbell, Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University, promotes:
AVOID OILS AND ANIMAL PROTEIN - EAT WHOLE FOODS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Some quotes:
Good online resources:
We all die eventually (Score:2)
If all other diseases are prevented most people die of cancer or dementia so don't worry about it. Plenty of people live to over 100 on a high fat diet. Its 90% genetics, rather than diet exercise or lifestyle (unless you go really out there).
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Yeah, 100% of people who eat will die, 100% of people who don't eat also die.
I think we have a problem, we can't keep eating and we can't stop eating...
I blame vegetarians (Score:2)
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Why does so much food contain palm oil?
I blame vegetarians
Then you're an idiot, frankly.
The result is a six-fold increase in palm oil connsumption since 1990.
Yes, because it's cheap.
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Palm oil is not solid at room temperature.
Unless you are sitting in a fridge.
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Palm oil is a mixture of oils with different melting points.
Obviously, like every oil.
Most of these are solid at room temperature, in temperate climates
None is. I suggest to go into a supermarket and look at a bottle of palm oil.
Your supermarket might even be cooled to something below normal room temperature: and it is still liquid.
If you have a "palm oil" that is solid at room temperature, then first of all it is not an oil but a fat. And it is heat treated to evapour the stuff which would keep it liquid
Re:I blame vegetarians (Score:4, Interesting)
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Presumably the liquid oil sold in your supermarkets is the result of fractional distillation,
Nope, it is the pure oil. Most people have a deep dislike for "refined oil".
while the solid fractions are used in commercial food production where a solid fat is needed. :D
Probably correct
See above: no idea what is done with the "distillation" results. I would assume it goes into the Pharma or wellness industry.
Re: I blame vegetarians (Score:2)
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Maybe someone is thinking palm oil same as coconut oil? :P
Could be.
But coconut oil is white - when solid. And is nearly colourless when liquid.
Palm oil has an deep orange/brown - perhaps mixture between lemon and orange - colour when liquid. Never saw it solid
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Should not be solid or semi solid at that temperature.
But I guess there are variations.
As I said we go into stores that are air conned - so I estimate around 18C - and never saw any sign of solid or flaking out.
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My guess is that different palm oils have different mixtures of various saturated and unsaturated fatty acids, accounting for the differences between melting points.
Interestingly, of major fatty acids, oleic is the only one I'm aware of with a melting point near room temperature. The others tend to be either much higher, or much lower.
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Or some "oils" are heated to evapour easy vapourized oils. And the the remaining stuff is sold as oil instead as "fat".
My mother used to buy fat for deep frying, in white fatty blocks. But they are all kind of "refined" - more precisely: what remains after refining. They come from Coconut and also "Palm" - but here in Europe it would not be sold as oil, but as "fat".
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That certainly could explain it.
I'm noticing that this and other processes to achieve a similar result - making solid fats from vegetable oils - are being used more and more, now that partial hydrogenation is being phased out. Interesterification is another of these processes.
It seems that people want solid fats, but they also want them to be healthy. Chemical processes such as hydrogenation proved not to deliver on the latter part. I'm not sure anything can. Generally, saturated fats have proven to be
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My room is about 18C to 22C :P
Are you sure you are talking about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I can assure you it is liquid far below 18C. Actually: I have never seen solid oil. But even at my GFs place in Thailand, in the morning in Winter when it is roughly 10C: coconut oil is solid white "fat". Palm oil is liquid. I bake/fry my eggs in it, so I'm pretty sure about that.
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The obvious answer is animal fats, which is what we traditionally used, but that would mean that the products aren't suitable for the vegetarian minority.
I would dispute that. The most likely reason is that palm oil is cheaper than traditional hard fats such as butter and lard. I don't think that catering to vegetarian preferences figures much in mass-market products such as cakes and biscuits.
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Why does so much food contain palm oil? It's because they need a fat that's solid at room temperatures.
Yes, and palm oil is cheaper.
Palm oil is being singled out because itâ(TM) (Score:3, Interesting)
Confused about why palm oil is being singled out.
Itâ(TM)s because a media war is currently being fought by against Palm Oil due to climate change pundits claiming that itâ(TM)s the leading cause of deforestation.
This research is trying to hook into the controversy. Therefore, this research has less to do with your health, but mostly to do with climate.
No wonder why everyone reading this story gets confused!
Re: Palm oil is being singled out because itâ (Score:2)
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How does this correlate to deforestation.
Palm oil depends on palm hearts which means that unlike coconuts they're killing trees for it. This would deplete the existing palms if they ran around chopping those down and that would cost too much to do anyway so they are cutting/burning down rainforest to make room for palm plantations. This is fairly obvious, and there are zillions of citations trivially locatable with google.
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Heart of palm has got fuck all to do with palm oil.
They are expanding their farms because they are mechanizing and their population is growing, they'll grow whatever makes the most money, but grow something they will ... unless you want to pay them the opportunity cost for not using their land? The western world domesticated vast amounts of their land, they are simply playing catch up.
Everything We Eat Both Causes And Prevents Cancer (Score:3)
Every food has studies showing that it both causes and prevents cancer. So don't rely on a single study to prove a food's influence on cancer. [sciencealert.com]
Meanwhile the world enjoys Nutella... (Score:2)
Everything you consume can probably kill you. Moderation is key.
facepalm (Score:2)
if u behave nicely u wOnt get bitc#slapped and there wOnt b any palm Oil On yOur vase
How bad is it? (Score:2)
Nice link (Score:2)
"published in Nature" pointing to https://10.0.4.14/s41586-021-0... [10.0.4.14],
for a " News for Nerds" site...