Is eating less meat linked to a lower risk of cancer?

 

• Researchers are exploring diet as a possible factor in the development of cancer.
• Previous research has indicated that eating meat is associated with a higher risk of some types of cancer.
• A new study has found that people who eat less meat have a lower risk of getting all types of cancer.
• The study, however, cannot prove cause, and the association between meat consumption and cancer risk may be due to other variables.

Researchers from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom recently released the results of a large study that investigated the effect of varying levels of meat consumption on the likelihood of developing cancer.

The study found that vegetarians, pescatarians, and people who eat little meat have a significantly reduced risk of developing cancer.

The authors of the study analyzed statistics regarding cancer cases in general and also took a close look at the effect of meat eating on three of the most common cancers: postmenopausal breast cancer, prostate cancer, and colorectal cancer.

The study’s lead author is Cody Watling, a DPhil student at the Cancer Epidemiology Unit at the University of Oxford’s Nuffield Department of Population Health. He told Medical News Today:

A large study group

The researchers followed 472,377 individuals in the UK Biobank database over an average period of 11.4 years.

None of the participants, who were aged 40–70 years when the team recruited them between 2006 and 2010, had a cancer diagnosis at the beginning of the study period. Over the course of the study, individuals reported their meat intake to the researchers.

The researchers divided the study cohort into four groups:

• Meat eaters reported eating processed meat, poultry, or red meat — including beef, pork, and lamb — more than five times each week. There were 247,571 individuals in this group, representing 52.4% of the total study population.
• Low meat eaters ate the same foods but a maximum of five times each week. Of the study population, 43.5%, or 205,385 people, were in this group.
• Fish eaters, who ate fish but not meat, accounted for 10,696 individuals, or 2.3% of the study population.
• Vegetarians and vegans, who ate neither meat nor fish, constituted 1.8% of the entire cohort, or 8,685 people.

Watling said, “Due to the large number of cancer cases in the UK Biobank, we were able to look at common cancer types in relation to diet groups, despite the low number of vegetarians and pescatarians, and explore this association further.”

At the end of the study period, 54,961 people had developed cancer of some type. The researchers noted 5,882 cases of colorectal cancer, 9,501 cases of prostate cancer, and 7,537 cases of postmenopausal breast cancer.

Source: Medical News Today