typically yes, but if theres brown spots it can cause cancerous cells.
Where did you hear this? And what type of cancer?
I hope I'm not going to make anyone feel like I'm picking on them ,but there is getting to be more and more false "scientific" information getting spread around. Most people get their information from the media and internet. But unfortunately these are not always accurate.
Only things in peer reviewed journals (or other forms of presentation that shows the rigors of unbiased study such as invention disclosures, closed corporate studies, etc.) should be used when it comes to deciding the health or harm of something. And even then, the conclusions presented in a journal should not be considered as fact, but still as just an opinion (albeit a logically based opinion) of the researcher as to what the data means. The concept of a peer reviewed article is that it gets reviewed by other researchers for validity before publication,
and after publication, other researchers should be able to perform the same experiment and get similar results. But even if some study gets published, it doesn't mean that all of the data is accurate, nor are the conclusions absolute fact. If after publication a different group performs a similar experiment and gets drastically different results, then one must consider that one or both studies are flawed in some way; perhaps one study had a factor affecting the results which the researchers failed to consider. Thus if there has been only one or a very few journal articles written on a certain topic, one must take the conclusions in those studies with a very critical eye. Sometimes those later studies can even completely change the current thinking of something that the science community had thought was well established. For example, the discovery of prions went completely against the central dogma of molecular biology. The central dogma stated that physical manifestations of life forms originates in the DNA and this physical information is only passed via the genetic coding of the DNA. So the structure of a protein would be stored in the DNA (and passed generation to generation only in the DNA), a transcript is made into the RNA, and finally the protein is built based on this RNA copy of the genetic blueprint. Prions, however, are malformed proteins that can actually cause other proteins to become malformed as well. Thus the physical characteristics are being passed from protein to protein instead of being passed through the genetic code of the DNA.
This is where a lot of the other forms of media run into trouble. Since sensational headlines sells the news, if the media gets a whiff of some exciting study, they will push it into the public's eye before the studies have gone through their proper course to substantiate the claims. Some news organizations even have "science writers" whose job it is to comb through those peer reviewed journals looking for any sensational study -- even if it is only one small study that hasn't had a chance to get reviewed post-publication. And unfortunately the sensational stuff is like "such and such causes cancer", or "this miracle cure is just around the corner", or even "there's this one simple thing you can do that will increase your life expectancy by 10 years". For example a while ago there was this scare spread in the media that a certain red food coloring causes cancer. After the initial announcement was made in the main-stream press, further studies showed that this food coloring was causing cancer only in the lab rats, and that the amounts those rats were ingesting were so much that they were actually causing the rat's fur to become pink -- far over the amount that any human would ever ingest in their lifetime (normalized to percentage of body-weight of the amount ingested). But because of the public outcry, this particular dye is no longer considered safe, and new food coloring had to be developed. Similarly, drugs coming out onto the market may have long term effects that the initial studies and clinical trials were not able to account for. And some may remember the big oat bran fixation the public had because a study showed how oat bran is very healthy for the heart? Later studies should that other whole grains were also as good if not better than oat bran (but Cheerios still touts the benefits of oat bran).
Community Forum
Topic: Are bananas healthy to eat? (Read 6480 times)
April 14, 2012, 05:50:49 pm
