New Study Proves That Fried Foods Exacerbate Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), Colitis and Colon Cancer
Source: Thailand Medical News Aug 24, 2019 4 years, 11 months, 2 days, 22 hours, 36 minutes ago
A research team from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst has demonstrated that fried foods and also frying oil, when consumed, exaggerated colonic inflammation, enhanced tumor growth and worsened gut leakage, spreading bacteria or toxic bacterial products into the bloodstream.
The team was lead by key author and Ph.D. student Jianan Zhang, Associate Professor Guodong Zhang, and Professor and Department Head Dr. Eric Decker.
Foods fried in vegetable oil are popular worldwide, but past research about the health effects of this cooking technique has been largely inconclusive and focused only on healthy people. For the first time, University of Massachusetts food scientists set out to examine the impact of frying oil consumption on inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and colon cancer, using animal models.
Associate Professor Guodong Zhang, whose food science lab focuses on the discovery of new cellular targets in the treatment of colon cancer and how to reduce the risks of IBD, commented in an interview with Thailand Medical News," "People with colonic inflammation or colon cancer should be aware of this research, it is not our message that frying oil can cause cancer. Rather, the new research suggests that eating fried foods may exacerbate and advance conditions of the colon. Globally, many people have these diseases, but many of them may still eat fast food and fried food. If somebody has IBD or colon cancer and they eat this kind of food, there is a chance it will make the diseases more aggressive."
In their research, the team used a real-world sample of canola oil, in which falafel had been cooked at 325 F in a standard commercial fryer at an eatery in Amherst, Massachusetts. Note than in America, Europe and Australia, Canola oil is used widely for frying.
A combination of the frying oil and fresh oil was added to the powder diet of one group of animal models. The control group was fed the powder diet with only fresh oil mixed in. The experiment tried to mimic as close as possible a human being’s diet.
The team looked at the effects of the diets on colonic inflammation, colon tumor growth and gut leakage, finding that the frying oil diet worsened all the conditions. The tumors doubled in size from the control group to the study group.
Professor Dr Decker, an expert in lipid chemistry performed the analysis of the oil, which undergoes an array of chemical reactions during the frying process. He characterized the fatty acid profiles, the level of free fatty acids and the status of oxidation. To test their hypothesis that the oxidation of polyunsaturated fatty acids, which occurs when the oil is heated, is instrumental in the inflammatory effects, the researchers isolated polar compounds from the frying oil and fed them to the animal models. The results were very similar to those from the experiment in which the animal models were fed frying oil, suggesting that the polar compounds mediated the inflammatory effects.
The research concluded that individuals with or prone to inflammatory bowel disease, should abstain from fried foods. The team is planning more research for a better understanding of the health impacts of fried foods and frying oil and hope that it will lead to dietary guidelines and public health policies.
Reference: Cancer Prevention Research&
nbsp;(2019). DOI: 10.1158/1940-6207.CAPR-19-0226 ,
