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The Truth About...: The Truth About Cancer: Eating Well in Lyon: Healthy Diets to prevent Bowel Cancer

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Eating Well in Lyon

17/07/2017 GMT

Eating Well in Lyon: Healthy Diets to prevent Bowel Cancer

The Truth About Cancer

BBC World Service - The Truth About..., The Truth About Cancer, Eating Well in Lyon: Healthy Diets to prevent Bowel Cancer

Anu Anand is in Lyon, looking at what we eat and drink and the risk of bowel cancer

Anu Anand is in France, looking at how what we eat and drink can affect our risk of developing bowel cancer.

Lyon has more than its fair share of Michelin-starred temples to gastronomy. It is home to traditional Lyon taverns known as bouchons, serving meaty dishes such as sausages, duck and pate, but also new contemporary restaurants, busy food markets, and vineyards.

Surrounded by delicious food, Anu looks at how what we eat and drink can affect our risk of developing cancer and in particular bowel cancer – the third most common cancer worldwide. The bowel is the lower part of the digestive system or gut and involved in processing our food.

Lyon is also home to IARC – the international agency for research on cancer – and coordinates EPIC, The European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition, one of the largest cohort studies in the world, with more than half a million participants recruited across 10 European countries. EPIC has discovered risk factors for bowel cancer that include obesity, alcohol and vitamin D deficiency, but like everything else nothing is straight forward. It turns out you can be a healthy weight, but also metabolically unhealthy.

Anu meets foodie blogger and cartoonist Guillaume Long and his wife to discover how millennials are reacting to some news that shocked the French – you do not need to eat meat every day. The programme also hears from Monsieur Marc Chodkiewcz who was diagnosed with bowel cancer at the age of 73, but now – 14 years later – wants to change attitudes to cancer. As Anu tours the foodie delights of Lyon she digests the latest data, and asks what should we be doing to lower the risk of this very common cancer.

Cartoon:© Guillaume Long

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