Swaminath S, et al. - In the Iowa Women's Health Study, a prospective cohort study of 55- to 69-year-old women who completed a food frequency questionnaire in 1986, researchers incorporated 11 minerals into a mineral score and investigated its association with incident colorectal cancer. Participants’ calcium, magnesium, manganese, zinc, selenium, potassium, and iodine intakes were ranked 1 to 5. Higher ranks indicate higher, potentially anticarcinogenic, intakes. Whereas the rankings were reversed for iron, copper, phosphorus, and sodium intakes, to account for their possible procarcinogenic properties. They summed the rankings to create each woman's mineral score. Observations revealed decreasing risk with an increasing score indicating that predominance of putative anti- relative to pro-colorectal carcinogenic mineral intakes is inversely associated with colorectal cancer risk.