This study seems dubious to me.

[Ducky]

French fries increase chance of breast cancer in children. (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8995031/)


I fail to see how you could directly link French fries to this and eliminate all other possible risk factors. Help?

(Note I refuse to call them Freedom Fries.)

I'm really lost as to how this one factor is singled out against all other factors of childhood...

[TriangleMan]

Dr. Karin Michaels (http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/facres/michels.html) researches diet and its connection to women's health. Given the way media tend to summarize articles I would try to find the original paper instead to see to what extent she 'concludes' this. The news article could be making a fuss over what the doctor feels is a simple correlation.

I also found some other sites where even as far as 10 years ago she was advocating against trans-fatty food like fries.

[Ducky]

Thanks, I'll see what I can find, but so far I haven't found anything with french fries specifically.

I agree this seems to be a case of media hype overblowing a single food regarding causality of breast cancer.

[CBL4]

I would bet that high french fry consumption correlates with high visits to fast food restaurants which correlates to poverty which correlates to all sorts of health problems including breast cancer.

“Other foods perceived as less healthy such as hot dogs or ice cream however, were not associated with breast cancer risk.�If they did correlations with 20 foods with no association with cancer, it is very probable that at least 1 would show a "statistically significant" correlation with breast cancer.

Food tests are notoriously inaccurate because of the lack double blindness and ones that require recall of earlier behaviors are particularly bad. Since this also appears to be a "fishing" for correlation study, it is probably about as unreliable test as you can find.

This does not mean there is no link but I share your skepticism.

ETA: In other words, no matter how much I hate taking my kids to McDonalds, I will continue to do so because they just love chicken nuggets, fries and the play areas.

CBL

[Diogenes]

A study of American nurses found that one additional serving of fries per week at ages three to five increased breast cancer risk by 27 percent.

........................

This increased 27 percent for each weekly serving reportedly eaten.



WTF Is ' one additional serving ' ? What was the baseline ?

If they had an addtional serving of fries, they probably had an extra serving of soda also ...



The finding was based on an interview with the mothers of the cancer patient, and there recollection of what the child ate...


I agree. Very Dubious..

[Jas]

Doesn't obesity contribute to breast cancer? In which case, I guess, the more fries you eat...