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28 March 2024

Fast food possible cancer cause in UAE

Published
By Staff

Cancer cases in the UAE have largely increased over the past years because of changing lifestyles during the oil era, including more reliance on the less nutritious fast food, a local doctor has said.

Environmental and hereditary factors also play a key role in the increase in the incidence of some serious diseases, mainly cancer, said Dr Hassan Yousuf Hateet, a medical consultant at the Dubai Hospital.

“The increase in the rate of cancer disease in the UAE over the past years was a direct result of the change in lifestyles, including heavy reliance on fast food,” he said, quoted by the Arabic language daily Albayan on Saturday.

“Fast food meals play a key role in causing cancer which is associated with food, mainly colon, breast and prostate cancer… the most important factors that lead to cancer include the dependence on wrong food habits that involve a high rate of fat, hydrocarbons and proteins and a low level of fibres and vitamins.”

Hateet said medical studies conducted in the UAE showed breast cancer cases were very low among women during the 1970s given their less reliance on meat and hydrocarbons and more intakes of vitamins and other healthy foods.

He said studies conducted on some women suffering from breast cancer in the UAE showed there was a big change in their eating habits.

“Besides fats, hydrocarbons and harmful salts, fast food meals also include high levels of sweetening and chemical substances which are used to preserve the food items…these substances were found to be somehow associated with cancer as they contain Acrylamide, which is a chemical present in food as a result of cooking practices, including fried potatoes.”

Hateet said the confirmed symptoms of heavy reliance on fast food meals include an increase in fat and hydrocarbons in the body tissues and cells, a rise in cholesterol and fat in blood, obesity, indigestion, breathing difficulties, high blood pressure and an increase in the sugar rate in blood.

“These symptoms raise the risk of having arthritis, artery and vein diseases, cardiac infarctions, heart failure and colon, breast and prostate cancer..”

Hateet said many schools in industrial countries have launched campaigns to educate students about healthy food and the need to change their eating habits.