Eating pizza could cut cancer risk: Italian scientists

Gorging pizza could help reduce the risk of certain forms of cancer, Italian scientists say.

In a twist to the accepted medical wisdom that food you really enjoy tends to be bad for you, researchers at a Milan pharmacology centre found that eating one or more pizzas a week dramatically reduced the incidence of some types of cancer. A study of 8,000 Italians found that regular pizza-eaters were 59 per cent less likely to contract cancer of the oesophagus, while the risk of developing cancer of the colon fell by 26 per cent. “We knew that tomato sauce was protective against certain tumours, but we certainly didn’t expect that pizza as a whole would provide such strong protection,” researcher Silvano Gallus told Sunday’s La Repubblica newspaper.(Source: ABC, Monday, July 21, 2003. 2:17pm)