As time flies by, more and more progress is made in the fight against cancer. Over the years, new and better screening methods have emerged, cutting-edge technologies have surfaced, successful treatments have saved lives that may have otherwise been lost, and awareness has been raised about all sorts of cancer-related issues. It's amazing really, because in so many areas, we are not making progress.

According to research published in the March/April 2007 issue of WebMD: the Magazine, the per capita consumption of corn sweeteners in 2004 was 78.1 pounds in the United States -- up from 35.3 pounds in 1980. In 2005, the per capita consumption of candy by Americans was 25.7 pounds. We are pumping our bodies full of junk -- our rates of obesity in this country prove it.

When I think about our trend of over-eating and over-indulging, I gain a better appreciation of how far we've come medically. Not only have researchers, scientists, and medical experts made strides in the prevention and treatment of disease, they've done it against the odds. Just think how much more progress we'd make if we all did a little better at living healthy lives. Why not start now?

I'm always skeptical about the connection between certain foods and cancer. There's just so much back and forth -- the lycopene found in tomatoes prevents cancer and then it doesn't, for example -- that I don't base any life decisions solely on so-called cancer prevention foods. I simply do what is best for my health. If it happens to keep cancer at bay, then I consider it a bonus.

I eat fruits and vegetables because I know they're good for me. It was nice, while it lasted, to think I was also cutting my risk of cancer recurrence but when it comes down to it, fruits and veggies are better than sweets and candies and junky carbohydrates. So they'll remain a staple in my life -- even though a large, seven-year study published in today's Journal of American Medical Association dashes all hopes that a diet low in fat and jam-packed with fruits and vegetables prevents the return of breast cancer.

Five daily servings of fruits and veggies are recommended in the United States. This is more than most Americans get yet still doesn't make a difference for those trying to minimize their chances of breast cancer recurrence.

Post-menopausal women: stay away from barbecued and smoked meat. Or at least increase your intake of fruit and vegetables.

Why?

Because a new study found that post-menopausal women who ate the most grilled, barbecued, and smoked red meat over a lifetime have a 47 percent higher risk of breast cancer. Those who additionally skimped on fruits and veggies had a 74 percent increase in risk.

Think about this:

More on coffee -- a topic of panel discussion at the recent Experimental Biology 2007 meeting in Washington, DC, and subject of nearly 400 studies investigating consumption and cancer risk.

Think about this:

No one claims coffee is the new health food. And non-coffee drinkers are not encouraged to drink the beverage for their health. Yet the beverage is certainly losing some of its negative health image.

But is it enough?

Some say coffee protects against colon, rectal, and liver cancers (diabetes too). These same people recognize it also can increase the risk of leukemia and stomach cancer. Those at risk, like pregnant women and children, should limit their consumption.

Like many connections between cancer and diet, there just isn't enough research to tell a whole story. We can only take what's available and make our own educated decisions about our own individual lives.

What decision will you make about coffee?

Daily consumption of red meat increases the risk of breast cancer. Daily consumption of red meat doesn't increase the risk of breast cancer. Ahhh. Which one is it?

In a previous post, I cited research that supported the increased risk. And now I've come across something new.

Think about this:

A nutritionist from New Zealand is disputing research, published in the British Journal of Cancer, claiming that women who ate more than100g of meat each day had the highest risk of developing breast cancer.

Red meat makes headlines -- again -- due to new research indicating it increases a woman's chances of developing breast cancer. I've heard this before. Maybe that's because it's becoming pretty conclusive.

Findings are most significant for post-menopausal women because these are the women with the highest rates of consumption -- about one portion of red meat per day. This daily doses puts them at a 56 percent greater risk than women who eat no red meat.

Researchers at the University of Leeds followed the eating habits and health of more than 35,000 women over the past seven years to gather their data, published in the British Journal of Cancer.

When Dr. Jian-Wei Gu went to Mississippi to study the cardiovascular system and the process of blood vessel growth, he had no idea he'd make national headlines about his research into the world of cancer.

Gu, assistant professor of physiology and biophysics at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, says his discovery of the mechanism by which alcohol consumption causes tumor growth was purely accidental.

And extremely significant.

Scientists have known for a hundred years about the link between alcohol consumption and cancer. A study from Paris in 1910 showed that 80 percent of patients with cancer of the esophagus or gastric track were alcoholics. More recently, scientists have found correlations between alcohol consumption and cancer of the mouth, pharynx, larynx, esophagus, liver, large bowel, and even the breasts. Yet lab experiments have always failed to show the effects in animals that investigators knew to be true in humans.

Until now.

It seems past studies used too much alcohol -- in concentrations of 20 percent -- and the animals just wasted away while showing no tumor growth. But when Gu used concentrations of one percent -- about one to two drinks per day in humans -- to study blood vessel growth, he detected stimulated tumor growth in both chick embryos and mice. Thus, his cancer discovery was born.

Gu has further concluded that melanoma cancers in mice grew significantly faster and larger in the mice who consumed the equivalent of one or two alcoholic drinks a day than the mice receiving no alcohol.

Gu's findings, now confirmed by other scientists, are evidence of what many have long suspected -- alcohol, even in moderation, increases cancer risk.

Simply being female puts all women at risk for breast cancer. That and age, race, family history, personal history, genetic make-up, when they had children, when they reach menopause, and a whole host of other possible factors.

Now U.S. doctors are officially calling body mass index, breast density, and alcohol consumption predictors of the disease, says Therese Bevers, medical director of the Cancer Prevention Center, at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

Bevers helped write updated guidelines for the prevention of breast cancer and presented them at the 12th annual National Comprehensive Cancer Network in Hollywood, Florida on Friday.

The guidelines, featuring the revised list of risk factors, also offer treatment options for women -- including bilateral mastectomy for women who have tested positive for the genes BRCA1 and BRCA2 as well as possible medical treatments with drugs such as tamoxifen and raloxifene.

Once upon a time there were two groups of mice, all genetically engineered to develop prostate cancer. Each group was fed the same amount of calories. One group of mice lived in cages warmed to 80.6 degrees. The other group lived in cages kept at 71.6 degrees. The mice in the cooler quarters burned more calories to keep warm. And after three weeks, they weighed less than the toasty warm mice. They were also less likely to develop prostate cancer.

Then there were two other groups of mice, also genetically engineered to develop prostate cancer. Both groups were kept in cages with temperatures 80.6 degrees and 71.6 degrees -- like above. But these mice got to eat whatever their little hearts desired. The mice in cooler cages ate 30 percent more than the mice in warmer cages. They got just as fat as the warm mice. And they all got prostate cancer at the same rate, despite the extra calories.

The moral of the story is this -- being lean rather than obese has a greater protective effect against cancer. Excess calorie retention, rather than consumption, raises cancer risk. This moral stands in contrast to what most researchers believe -- that a restricted diet cuts the risk of and slows the growth of cancer and this is directly related to calorie intake.

Tim Nagy, Ph.D. and professor of nutrition sciences at the University of Alabama, Birmingham and lead researcher on the mice story says when you eat more calories than you burn, you store the extra calories as fat. It's the fat cells -- not the extra calories themselves -- that affect cancer risk.

It's not a good idea for humans to chill themselves to avoid cancer, Nagy says. But perhaps people could get the same effect by exercising more since that, too, burns calories.

Nagy's study appears in the January 1 issue of the journal Cancer Research.

You're in luck if you like fruit, vegetables, and milk -- because Italian researchers say these items appear to reduce the likelihood of developing liver cancer.

Diet plays a significant role in the risk of liver cancer, says the lead researcher of this study who singles out fruits and vegetables as the foods with the most protective effect.

Subjects of this study -- published in the International Journal of Cancer -- were 185 patients with liver cancer and a comparison group of 412 controls without cancer. Participants responded to questions about diet, and their answers showed that as intake of certain foods went up, the risk of liver cancer went down. Factoring out other issues possibly contributing to this indication, researchers found that high intake of milk and yogurt cut the risk of developing liver cancer by 78 percent. High consumption of white meat lowered the risk by 56 percent, and when combined with high intake of fruit, this number dropped to 52 percent.

These finding are particularly important for patients with hepatitis B and hepatitis C (HCV) infection. But overall, experts say anyone wishing to ward off liver cancer should adopt a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, limit alcohol consumption, and avoid HCV infection by practicing safe sex and never sharing needles.

The first study showing low-fat diets can prevent breast cancer recurrence now reveals -- thanks to longer follow-up -- that the benefit was almost exclusive to women whose tumor growth was not fueled by hormones.

Trimming fat translated into a 66 percent lower risk of death for these women. One doctor with no role in the study says this is "as great or better than any treatment intervention that we've given" for this type of cancer, which is notoriously hard to treat.

As with all studies relating to diet, however, there is always the possibility that the benefit stems from something other than an altered diet -- like increased intake of other foods like fruits and vegetables, weight loss, or better overall health that accompanies the decrease in fat.

For women whose cancers are driven by hormones -- the majority of breast cancer patients fall into this category -- the diet change seemed to make little difference in the risk of recurrence or survival. This finding comes as a surprise to many health professionals who expected all women to benefit from a cut in fat consumption.

A new study to test weight loss, increased exercise, and low-fat diets in women with hormone receptor positive breast cancer will launch in the United States and Canada next year.

This is a bummer. I have been diligently drinking my green tea thinking it can maybe be of some use. According to an article recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, consumption of green tea does not appear to have an effect on cancer mortality.

On the flip side, green tea seems to reduce the risk of overall death and death due to cardiovascular disease.

Researchers from Japan followed patients from the Ohsaki National Health Insurance Cohort Study. It included 40,530 adults between the ages of 40 to 79 years. The participants had not been diagnosed with cancer, stroke and heart disease when the study began.

The study showed that the consumption of green tea had no effect on cancer mortality among these patients. It was good news that it did help those with cardiovascular disease.

I have heard so much about green tea and the antioxidants that I would really like to read more studies to see if maybe it can be of benefit. I still like green tea and will continue to drink it because tea is one of my favorite things.

Celebrities have a way of motivating the public to take action. They help dictate fashion trends and set standards for mostly unattainable body shapes and sizes. They add hype to political views and philosophies and make influential statements about all sorts of issues. Like breast cancer. With its backing from celebrities like Melissa Etheridge and Sheryl Crow and Kylie Minogue -- all breast cancer survivors who are speaking out and raising awareness -- breast cancer has burst onto the media scene and is receiving powerful, positive attention. Kylie Minogue's public diagnosis spurred so many women into getting their breasts checked that the Medical Journal of Australia reports a 40 percent increase in bookings for mammograms. But sometimes, celebrity diagnoses don't elicit a response at all.

Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last month -- yet the announcement barely registered on the public's radar. Perhaps he does not command the same kind of reaction as pop singers do. Or perhaps it's the type of cancer that keeps his public battle on the sidelines.

The breasts are a visible icon of femininity -- out in the forefront for all to see. And so the issue of breast cancer is in the forefront. The pancreas, on the other hand, are hidden behind the stomach and are out of sight -- and out of mind. When Apple chief executive Steve Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2004, he didn't even know where to find his pancreas. And so this organ does not attract much fanfare -- and therefore does not attract the funding and research that breast cancer does. Which is sad because this cancer is not just hidden inside the body. It's also a hidden killer. It can't be felt like breasts can be felt. And there is no easy way to detect it, like with mammogram and other imaging techniques. Often a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer -- the fourth leading cause of cancer death in Western societies -- comes with a death sentence. And more and more, breast cancer diagnoses come with promising expectations of survival.

We may not know as much as about pancreatic cancer as we do breast cancer. But there are some behaviors that may contribute to this deadly disease. So in the spirit of prevention, consider this:

• If nobody smoked, 25 percent of pancreatic cancer cases wouldn't happen.
• Alcohol consumption can increase the risk by 15 times.
• Some studies link high meat consumption and low vegetable consumption to incidences of pancreatic cancer.
• Folate, the B vitamin in green leafy vegetables, oranges, legumes, and whole grains seem to reduce the risk. But folate supplements don't seem to have the same healthy effect.

I'm never quite sure about what foods I should eat and what foods I should not eat. Sometimes I hear that fish is healthy and recommended and then I hear that I should not eat fish at all due to concerns such as mercury levels. It seems that opinion on certain foods -- like fish and carbohydrates and dairy items -- sways and changes, which leaves me uncertain about how I might approach my diet in the best possible way. But opinion on red meat seems to be getting more and more consistent -- as more and more studies indicate that red meat is associated with a variety of health problems. And now red meat appears to raise the risk of developing pancreatic cancer, according to a Swedish report in the International Journal of Cancer.

More than 61,000 women were studied for possible effects of meat, fish, poultry, and egg consumption. After 17 years, 172 of these women were diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and researches say it's because of the red meat. I suppose this could have been a coincidence -- and these women were destined for their diagnoses regardless of diet. But researchers conclude that long-term consumption of red meat is associated with an increased risk of pancreatic cancer -- one of the most deadly cancers that is seldom detected at an early, curable stage.

The good news from this study -- there does not seem to be a connection between pancreatic cancer and the consumption of fish and eggs. And the consumption of poultry may actually cut the risk of pancreatic cancer.

To cut down on cancer risks if consuming alcohol, The American Cancer Society, recommends cutting down drinks to one daily for women and two daily for men. Alcohol consumption on a daily basis increases the risk of cancers of the mouth, esophagus, pharynx, larynx, and liver in both women and men and also increases the risk of breast cancer in women. The risk elevates after one daily drink for women and two for men.

Oral cancers are six times more common in alcohol users than non alcohol users. About 75 percent to 80 percent of all patients with oral cancer consume alcohol frequently. Smokers who also drink are at much higher risks. Heavy alcohol use is the primary cause of liver cancer. Alcohol alters the liver's ability to metabolize some carcinogenic substances into harmless compounds or to disable certain existing carcinogens. Studies also show a relation between higher risks in breast cancer with alcohol use and the increase risk factor rising with the more drinks consumed daily. Alcohol increases hormones in your body.