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Our new online Cancer Health Check: we put it to the test!

We’ve created an easy online quiz, our Cancer Health Check

Author: Sidonie Sakula-Barry
Published: 24 May 2018

Today we launched our major new report, Diet, Nutrition, Physical Activity and Cancer: a Global Perspective. It’s our review of the most up-to-date research, to provide you with recommendations to reduce your risk of cancer.

Would you like support to make healthier lifestyle choices?

Around 40 per cent of cancers could be prevented. Changing lifestyle habits, including eating a healthy diet, being more active each day and maintaining a healthy weight are, after not smoking, the most important ways you can reduce your cancer risk. So we recommend that you follow all of our Cancer Prevention Recommendations.

Many of us may feel that we lead a relatively healthy life – and that it’s not us who needs to make any changes. Alternatively, you may feel that there are so many changes you need to make to your lifestyle that you don’t know where to begin.

Our new Cancer Health Check

To help you, we’ve created an easy online quiz, our Cancer Health Check. You can answer simple questions about your current lifestyle and get information on specific areas you’re doing well with – and the areas where you could make changes. It will even provide you with practical tips on how to make those small, but key, changes. Try it here.

Practice what we preach?

At World Cancer Research Fund, we like to put our money where our mouth is! So we tried the Cancer Health Check for ourselves, to see if we were as healthy as we thought – or if there were any surprises!

KatherineThe ‘healthy’ one – Katherine from our Health Information team: “I’ve always thought that I was pretty healthy – I don’t smoke and never have, and I eat lots of veg. But the Cancer Health Check saw right through me! I’m not as active as I should be. So now I’m trying to turn any time where I’m sitting in to time where I’m moving.”

“I do squats in the ad breaks when watching television now.”

SheraineThe not-so-healthy one – Sheraine from our Operations team: “I know that I have a lot to work on – I find it hard not to just eat pasta and takeaways every day. But the Cancer Health Check actually gave me some practical suggestions, so that making changes to my lifestyle won’t be so hard.”

“It suggested using wholegrain varieties of bread, pasta and rice instead of white/refined versions. I tried the Cajun salmon with spicy tomato pasta recipe using wholegrain spaghetti, which was delicious.”

AdamThe ‘doing OK’ one – Adam from our Fundraising team: “The Cancer Health Check was really easy to use and gave me positive feedback so that I felt inspired to keep up!”

“I always eat fruit in the morning to get a head start on having my 5 A DAY.”

Try the Cancer Health Check for yourself​.

You can also read all of our Cancer Prevention Recommendations. They’re based on our major new report, Diet, Nutrition, Physical Activity and Cancer: a Global Perspective, which reviews decades of evidence on cancer prevention, relating to diet, nutrition and physical activity.