Every other day, someone writes a story about something causing or preventing cancer. Usually, it’s all hype or the explanation is a snooze, but sometimes, the research is just strange enough to grab our attention. That’s the case with a new study, which details how stale bread might help ward off colon cancer.
Researchers from RMIT University (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) in Melbourne, Australia baked up some white bread and measured temperature’s effect on the way a kind of starch, called resistant starch, developed. The study found that this resistant starch grew best at refrigerator temperatures.
Not much grew, probably not even enough to outweigh how unhealthy white bread is, but this resistant starch happens to be a tool for protecting against colon cancer and provides other health benefits. That being said, the researchers think their finding could apply to other, less crappy breads.
Resistant starch is a set of carbohydrate molecules resistant to the body’s own digestive enzymes. Instead, some of the bacteria living in our intestines feast on these starches, and leave behind a slew of fatty acids. “It’s a carbon source for the bacteria in our colon who produce a range of healthy byproducts for the human gut,” said William Sullivan,
the paper’s first author from RMIT. These chemicals, with names like “butyrate” and “propionate,” seem to have all sorts of helpful benefits—one paper says they help guard against obesity and regulate the gut hormones.Another says that they help maintain healthy cell growth in the lining of the colon, and even stop or slow the beginning of the cellular chain reaction that could lead to colon cancer.
