Materia Medica Malaysiana

Guess what you should not be eating

The next anti-cancer advertising line could just be this: ready-to-cook, ready-to-serve, ready-to-eat ... and ready-to-die?

For, a year-long study has found that 70 per cent of Malaysians struck by the deadly disease consistently down yummy items like Ikan bilis, ikan masin, belacan and udang kering bought off the shelves of supermarkets.

The study, conducted by Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia's Faculty of Allied Health Science, found that cancer patients, especially those living in coastal states, liked such salty and highly-preserved foods.

"There might be something in the food which causes cancer," said National Cancer Council (Makna) president Datuk Mohd Farid Ariffin.

"We have asked the faculty to do further studies on this. We believe that such foods may be loaded with salt and preservatives." The study, sponsored by Makna, is headed by the Faculty's Department of Nutrition and Dietetics head, Associate Professor Dr Fatimah Arshad.

An official announcement on the study will be made once the research is completed.

Farid said when people ate such food and did not do exercise regularly, the toxins that accumulated in their bodies could not be eliminated easily.

"We know that high levels of nitrate in preservatives are carcinogenic," he said, adding that Malaysians should pay attention to the foods they bought.

"They go into supermarkets and buy ready-to-cook and ready-to-serve and ready-to-eat food items. These may be genetically modified or overly processed. They may not have many nutrients." He said although he did not want to alarm Malaysians, they had to pay attention to their diet as 40,000 new cases of cancer were being seen yearly.

A total of 26,089 cancers were diagnosed in 2002. More than 11,800 were men and over 14,200 were women.

"Cancer is on the rise," said Farid after witnessing the launch of the first major cancer awareness and screening campaign at a hotel today.

In men, the most common cancers are leukaemia, lung, nasopharynx, colon, rectum and prostate. In women, they are leukaemia, breast, cervix, colon, ovary and lung.

Malaysia has the world's highest rate of nasopharyngeal (nose) cancer for females and the second highest rate for males.

Farid said Makna, together with UKM, would also do studies to determine whether diet, cooking oils and cooking styles were factors which caused cancer.

The Chinese tend to suffer from breast, lung, and nasopharyngeal cancer; Indians, mouth, larynx, oesophagus and tongue cancer, and Malays, thyroid cancer, lymphatic leukaemia and lymphoma.

Earlier, Health Ministry's parliamentary secretary Lee Kah Choon said medical advances had made a third of all cancers preventable and a further one third — if diagnosed early — potentially curable.

He said a woman in Malaysia had one in 19 chance of getting breast cancer and of 100 women afflicted, 30 would have breast cancer. The Makna, Pathlab and Parkson cancer screening campaign offers general health screening, cancer marker screening and breast cancer screening. The campaign will run from Aug 5 to Dec 31 at various Parkson outlets