what they said (Hover the mouse cursor over underlined words for more info)

Dairy and other calcium-rich foods might help protect against some types of cancer, a study of nearly half a million older men and women suggests.

Yikyung Park of the U.S. National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md., and colleagues gave food questionnaires to 492,810 participants and checked their medical records for cases of cancer.

Their findings appear in Monday's Archives of Internal Medicine...

The original article can be found at: http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2009/02/23/calcium-cancer.html

how did it rate? (more information)

what we said (Hover the mouse cursor over underlined words for more info)

This is a fairly good report of an observational study which found that a high calcium intake was associated with a lower risk of colorectal and other cancers of the digestive system. The reporter advised caution, seeing that there may be other reasons (social determinants, for example) for those cancer reductions.

It would have been good to see some absolute numbers around the benefits of calcium intake in addition to the relative numbers included here. Making mention of potential harms associated with excessive calcium consumption, and informing readers of the recommended daily could have served to strengthen this report.

The funding sources are a mystery, yet the report is well-balanced and will likely not drive an excessive use of calcium until more supporting research is done.

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