Salmonella Update

With many new recalls of foods containing peanut butter or peanut paste, the Food and Drug Administration is now recommending that consumers avoid all commercially prepared foods made with peanut butter or eating peanut butter served in institutional settings.

Current recalls, listed on the FDA website, include a variety of cookies, candies, sandwich crackers, ice cream, and frozen pastry with many different labels. Read the rest of this entry »

Brief Research Reports

• Maslinic acid, a compound found in high concentrations in olive skins, slows development of colon cancer cells and leads to their death.  Researchers in Spain isolated the natural triterpenoid compound from the waxy coating on olives.  They suggest that its development may lead to drugs to prevent or treat colorectal cancer.   Fernando J. Reyes-Zurita, Cancer Letters, January 8, 2009.
• There was no evidence that eating more foods high in acrylamide increased risk of either colon or rectal cancer in a large group of Swedish men.  More than 45,300 men in the Cohort of Swedish Men completed questionnaires about what they ate and how often at the beginning of the study.  Nine years later, there was no significant difference between those in the highest quarter of acrylamide consumption and those in the lowest one-fourth.
  Acrylamide is created when carbohydrate-rich foods are prepared at high temperatures such as with french fries and potato chips.  Although acrylamide has caused cancer in animals, there is not yet good evidence that foods high in the substance cause human cancer.  Susanna Larsson, European Journal of Cancer, online January 2, 2009. Read the rest of this entry »

Salmonella Update

The Kellogg Company has put a hold on shipping its sandwich crackers with peanut butter.  It is removing them from retail store shelves and asks consumers not to eat them until further notice that their safety is assured.

Products affected include Austin® and Keebler® branded Toasted Peanut Butter Sandwich Crackers, Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich Crackers, Cheese and Peanut Butter Sandwich Crackers, and Peanut Butter-Chocolate Sandwich Crackers Read the rest of this entry »

The typical Western diet increases the risk of tumor recurrence for patients with colon cancer.

Patients who ate the most red and processed meats, refined grains, fats, and sugars were about three times as likely to die or have their cancers recur as patients who ate these foods the least. While there is no shortage of evidence linking the so-called Western diet to an increased risk for developing colon cancer, the study by the group at Harvard is among the first to examine the impact of such a diet on survival among patients treated for the disease. Read the rest of this entry »

An panel of experts at the American Society of Clinical Oncology recommends that all patients who are being considered for anti-EGFR therapy have their tumors tested for the KRAS gene. If mutations are found, the panel says they should not be treated with Erbitux® (cetuximab) or Vectibix™ (panitumumab). Read the rest of this entry »