Cancer survivors appear to be less likely to eat a healthy diet than other people; they are skipping the leafy green vegetables and whole grains, a study suggests.
Researchers studied the diets of more than 1,500 cancer survivors and more than 3,000 people with no history of cancer. All the participants took part in the National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey. The researchers then ranked the participants based on how well they followed dietary recommendations made by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Data for the current study came from adults who participated in the dietary surveys between 1999 and 2010. They reported how often they ate the recommended amounts of foods such as fruits, vegetables, greens and beans; whole grains; dairy foods; seafood and plant proteins; and fatty acids. Researchers also examined how much refined grains, salt; and empty calories the people ate.
They then ranked the diets, giving a perfect score of 100 to people whose diets included all the recommended servings of recommended foods and none of the non-nutritious foods. Cancer survivors scored a 47.2 on average, while the other people did slightly better with a typical score of 48.3. Cancer survivors had more points deducted for empty calories, solid fats, sugary foods, and alcohol than others in the study. Cancer survivors also ate fewer vegetables.
However, the researchers could not determine the timing of the cancer diagnoses or the cancer treatments patients had received. It was also impossible to tell from the study whether cancer survivors' diets were different before they were diagnosed with cancer.
It turns out that neither group of people ate a particularly healthy diet, but the cancer survivors generally had less nutritious habits than the other people in the study, the researchers reported. This is a problem because good nutrition helps prevent diseases while poor nutrition can worsen many chronic health conditions common among cancer survivors, according to lead study author Dr. Fang Fang Zhang, a nutrition researcher at Tufts University in Boston.
"It is remarkable that cancer survivors are still burdened by suboptimal dietary intake," Zhang said by email to Reuters Health. "Not getting enough fiber and having too many empty calories are established risk factors for many chronic health conditions."
The study was published in the journal Cancer.