High-Fiber Bread Associated with Reduced Hormone Negative Risk; Fried Potatoes Associated with Increase

I grew up loving white bread—a piece of lunch meat, some mayo and good old Wonder bread was my idea of the best grade school lunch ever. Yummm. Add some potato chips and it didn’t bother me that I had just tried to recite Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees” and kept starting at the last line and Sister Mary Schoolteacher made me sit down in humiliation. (I kept starting with the final line: “Poems are made by fools like me.” No doubt Sister thought, “Fool indeed.”)

It took me decades to get to truly like whole wheat bread. Fried potatoes remain one of my favorites, although I seldom eat them now. And now I can Google the words to “Trees.” (See below.)

New research shows that I was absolutely on the wrong track for most of my life, but my post-cancer diet is right on the money. Swedish researchers monitored the diets of 544 women for 10.3 years. They discovered that those with a diet that regularly included high-fiber bread had a significantly reduced risk of breast cancer—both hormone negative and hormone positive.

Fried potatoes were significantly associated with an increase in hormone negative breast cancer. Their research was published in August in the journal Carcinogenesis.

So, cut the French fries and chomp on whole wheat bread. Chances are you’ll feel better, fight cancer, and lose weight. Had I done that, maybe I would have recited the poem correctly.

Trees
by Joyce Kilmer

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest

Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,

And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear

A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain,

Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,

But only God can make a tree.