Eat More Fruit? Are you kidding me???

[Christine]

Eat more fruit, Southie smokers

August 12, 2007

While Southie's smoking rate is somewhat higher than that of Boston as a whole -- 29 percent compared with 20 percent -- its incidence of lung cancer is more than double that of the rest of the city ("Where there's smoke," City Weekly, July 29). If smoking were a primary cause of this disparity, South Boston's higher lung cancer rate would parallel -- in the same proportion -- its higher smoking rate, which it does not. The Environmental Protection Agency's 1992 report on secondhand smoke notes that a high consumption of fruit is related to a low incidence of lung cancer.

Perhaps medical officials would be more successful in reducing South Boston's lung cancer rate if they encouraged a better diet rather than concentrating only on quitting smoking.