A recent analysis of 13 major studies shows no reduction in bowel cancer rate for people with a fibre-rich diet.

Stephanie Smith-Warner and her colleagues at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston examined “prospective” studies in which healthy people were followed to see if their food intake altered their chances of getting cancer. The data covered 725,628 men and women, who were followed for up to 20 years.  About 8000 of these people developed bowel cancer, and it made no difference how much fibre they had eaten (The Journal of the American Medical Association, vol 294, p 2849).

But the new analysis did not include a huge prospective study of 500,000 Europeans in 10 countries, known as EPIC, which was published in 2003 and had completly different results.