UK's Dietary Needs Not Being Met Since Joining the European Union

06/10/06 Recent research from the University of Surrey, UK, has indicated that the UK's dietary needs are not being met as a result of the change in our trading patterns since joining the EU.

Before joining the EU, the UK used to buy the majority of its wheat from Canada and the USA. North America has soil which is naturally rich in selenium, an essential mineral long known to have vital cancer prevention properties. However, the UK now uses home-grown and EU wheat which has a considerably lower selenium content. Deaths from cancer in the UK now outnumber deaths from heart disease and stroke and UK scientists have been prompted to investigate the link between low selenium intakes and cancer mortality.

Dr Margaret Rayman of the Division of Nutrition, Dietetics and Food Science from the School of Biomedical and Molecular Sciences in the University of Surrey stated: "It is in the public interest to finance more research on the apparent relationship between selenium and cancer risk."

Since as early as the 1960s, geographical studies by Shamberger and Frost in 1969, Schrauzer in 1977 and Clark in1991, have shown a consistent trend for populations with low selenium intakes to have higher cancer mortality rates.

A study was carried out in France by Akbaraly et al last year (2005) which followed a group of 1389 elderly volunteers to for a period of nine years. The average level of selenium in the group, as measured in blood samples collected when they joined the study, was similar to that in UK people of the same age. Over the nine-year time period, 101 subjects died, fifty-five of them from cancer. Interestingly, when the volunteers were divided into four groups according to the levels of selenium in their bodies at the beginning of the study, it was found that four times as many deaths from cancer had occurred among those in the bottom group than among those in the top group.

The strongest evidence for a protective effect of selenium relates to prostate cancer but significant protection has also been shown from colon cancer, lung cancer, oesophageal and stomach cancers.

But what can the consumer do? Aside from ordering our bread fresh from North America every day, the safest option is currently to eat a few Brazil nuts a day to help us to consume an adequate amount of selenium. Dr Rayman has been involved in the development of functional foods with a higher selenium content that can be readily absorbed by the body. Rayman and some other European scientists are trying to raise money to fund the demanding and meticulous studies that are needed to prove that selenium truly has a beneficial effect in reducing cancer risk.

In today's society where one in three people will suffer from some form of cancer in their lifetime, a study of this nature would have a dramatic effect on the war against cancer.