T. Martin asked:
>Don Wiss wrote:
>> They may seem healthy now, but they have many years to go. I expect many of
>> your healthy friends will come down with a cancer later in life. Cancer
>> incidence is correlated with grain consumption.
>
>Do you happen to know the value of that correlation coefficient?

Nope. I based my comment on several things:

In Vilhjalmur Stefansson's book _Cancer Disease of Civilization_ 1960; Hill
and Wang, New York, NY, it points out that Stanislaw Tanchou "....gave the
first formula for predicting cancer risk. It was based on grain consumption
and was found to accurately calculate cancer rates in major European
cities. The more grain consumed, the greater the rate of cancer." Tanchou's
paper was delivered to the Paris Medical Society in 1843. He also
postulated that cancer would likewise never be found in hunter-gatherer
populations. This began a search among the populations of hunter-gatherers
known to missionary doctors and explorers. This search continued until WWII
when the last wild humans were "civilized" in the Arctic and Australia. No
cases of cancer were ever found within these populations, although after
they adopted the diet of civilization, it became common.

More recently Bruce Aimes of U.C. Berkeley published a series of articles
on cancer causation in the journal Science (#236,238,240) one of which
(in#238,Dec 18,1987) is titled "Paleolithic Diet, Evolution and Carcinogens".

And in Lutz, W.J., "The Colonisation of Europe and Our Western Diseases",
Medical Hypotheses, Vol. 45, pages 115-120, 1995, Dr. Lutz, in the face of
epidemiological studies that failed to support the current belief that fat
intake was at the root of coronary disease and cancer, has done his own
explorations of
epidemiological data. His findings show a clear, inverse relationship
between these civilisatory diseases and the length of time the people of a
given region of Europe have had to adapt to the high carbohydrate diet
associated with the cultivation of cereal grains that was begun in the Near
East, and spread very slowly through Europe. (I can privately sent people
this article without exhibits if they privately ask me. Requests posted to
the list will be ignored. Do not hit the reply button.)

And then Loren Cordain's article on grains should be out in the near
future. In it he blames cereal grains for our autoimmune diseases. It will
be in the World Review of Nutrition and Dietetics.

Don.