Analyzing huge datasets collected by major campaigns in China and South Korea, scientists from Hoseo University (Korea) and Shanxi Institute of Science and Technology (China) discovered that it is Asian cooking that causes stomach cancer.
Previously in 2018, the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) tried to identify dietary causes of stomach cancer, but they did not find any foods that produced enough convincing evidence.
Fried foods in meals and street foods such as skewers, fried cakes... popular in Asia are related to high rates of stomach cancer - Illustration photo from the Internet
However, they suspect that some risk factors may come from the way fish or meat is prepared, such as being soaked in water or given too much salt.
This time, the Korean-Japanese research team demonstrated that the rate of stomach cancer increased significantly in people who ate a lot of fried food, due to the combined effects from many pathways.
The most common is the high nitrate content in foods cooked at high temperatures, not just fried foods but also grilled foods. That has been shown to increase the risk of cancer.
As for vegetables, the habit of eating raw vegetables and frying vegetables is harmful. Boiling vegetables reduces the natural nitrate content by 47-59%, while frying them together increases the nitrate content by 12-29%.
The habit of reusing frying oil is also harmful. Oil reused four times leads to a four-fold increase in the risk of gastrointestinal cancer in general.
In addition to fried foods that are popular in main meals, Asians also have the habit of using other fried snacks such as fried cakes. This also leads to meals at different times - often at night - which also contributes to increasing the risk of many diseases, including cancer.
"Given the practical difficulty of completely eliminating fried foods from the diet, we recommend reducing the frequency of consumption or limiting the amount per serving, in addition to avoiding frying and cooking at excessively high temperatures," the authors wrote in a paper published in Nutrients.
According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), stomach cancer is the fifth most common cancer in the world and the fourth leading cause of cancer deaths. The rate of stomach cancer has decreased globally in recent years, but it remains significantly high in some Asian countries. In South Korea, it is the second most common cancer.
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