If there are theories disseminated through social networks about fruits and vegetables with miraculous abilities to treat oncological diseases, there are also the opposite versions, that there are certain compounds that accelerate the development of diseases, none of them, most of the time, is correct. . On Facebook, now a new theory has emerged, which says that apple peel contains cancer cells.
One of the users of this social network mentioned the science laboratory at Yale University, in the United States, to support his idea, and mentioned that there were some “curious” students in this faculty. testing “a new device to detect human cancer cells”. And this is where the apple peel comes in: “Seeing a nice apple in my colleague’s lunch, and since the apple has plant cells, they took this apple to the device, which detected cancer cells in the apple peel.”
These students, the user continued to describe on June 9, also discovered that “those cancer cells were formed by the pesticide accumulated in the apple peel.”
However, there are several errors in this post. Nutritionist in the oncology area of the AIM Cancer team, Inês Onofre Domingues deconstructed, in response to the Observer, each of the information exposed in the shared text. First of all, “there is no reference to the device in question, nor any study carried out.” “There is nothing to show that this described device is working,” explained Inês Onofre Domingues, adding that, within the scientific community, “there is no information to support” that the skin of the apple contains cancer cells.
“We can only say that there is a scientific basis when there is a careful study, with a multidisciplinary team and several professionals. In this case, we are talking about a device that is yet to be studied, so I don’t see any reference to precision. This device, if it is to be studied, there is still no evidence of its existence for scientific use. The conclusions drawn there cannot be corroborated by scientific society, much less [se podem] draw lessons for cellular changes at the level of human characteristics.”
Furthermore, Inês Onofre Domingues also warned, apples do not have cells, but molecules: “Cells are characteristic of the human being. A set of cells is called a tissue, a set of tissues is called an organ, a set of organs is called a system. In short, and since this study was carried out —whose conclusions do not exist in the scientific community—, a change could have been detected at the molecular level in the skin of the apple, since it is possible that it undergoes changes.
The oncological disease is not transmissible, it originates in the cells and only a very small part of the detected cancers, between 10 and 15%, are hereditary. And, as nutritionist Inês Onofre Domingues explained, it is possible to find oncogenic agents in various foods, since it depends on the chain of consumption —from when they are produced to when they reach the plate— of the food in question. “Will some oncogenic agents be found in the skin of the apple? Wow, I can’t deny it. I don’t know where all the apples are produced, I don’t control the chain,” she added in relation to the fruit mentioned in the post. However, “It is not by consuming an apple with a very low agrochemical that [uma pessoa] will develop cancer cells.
Conclusion
The information shared on Facebook is not true. There is no evidence in the scientific community of the existence of a device capable of detecting cancer cells at Yale University, nor of any study that says that the apple peel has “cancer cells”. By the way, apples don’t have cells, they have molecules.
Thus, according to the Observer classification system, this content is:
MISTAKEN
In the Facebook rating system this content is:
FAKE: primary content claims are factually inaccurate. This option generally corresponds to “fake” or “mostly fake” ratings on fact check sites.
NOTE: This content was curated by The Observer as part of a fact-checking partnership with Facebook.
Source: Observadora
