Founded in 1994, Shape Up America! is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization committed to raising awareness of obesity as a health issue and to providing responsible information on healthy weight management.
Endnotes
1 This brief primer on the cancer process is found in chapter 2 of the WCRF/AICR report, Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity, and the Prevention of Cancer: a Global Perspective. Cancer can also be seen as a group of diseases that affects many different tissues and types of cell, and can be defined by their tissue of origin. Approximately 85 percent of adult cancers develop from the epithelial cells of the inner and outer linings of the body and are called carcinomas. Cancers of glandular tissue such as the breast are called adenocarcinomas; cancers from bone and muscle derived from mesoderm cells (embryonic cells that grow to form muscle, blood, bone and connective tissue) are called sarcomas.
Each type of cancer has different characteristics, but one feature of all these diseases is unregulated cell growth and/or cell death. Apart from hematological cancers such as leukemias, this results in a tumor or mass, and cancerous cells often invade the surrounding tissue. Spread of cancer cells from the primary site to other parts of the body is called metastasis. Benign tumors do not invade or metastasize. Malignant tumors do not remain localized but can invade and/or metastasize.
2 The 2007 report on cancer prevention, published by the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research, is the result of a five-year process involving nine independent teams of scientists from around the world, hundreds of peer reviewers, and 21 international experts who reviewed and analyzed over 7,000 large-scale studies. The full diet and cancer report is available online.