A growing number of people are eating less meat. Health is often cited as a popular reason for people to make this shift.
A large body of research has shown that a plant-based diet can have many health benefits, including lowering the risk of chronic diseases. Two large studies suggest that a vegetarian or pescatarian diet may be linked to a slightly lower cancer risk.
Some research has shown that a diet could lower the risk of cancer. This is what we wanted to find in our recent study. We found that people who eat less meat are less likely to get cancer.
We used data from the UK Biobank study, a database of detailed genetic and health information from nearly 500,000 British people, to conduct a large-scale analysis of diet and cancer risk. When participants were recruited, they completed questionnaires about their diet and how often they ate meat and fish.
We tracked participants for 11 years using their medical records to understand how their health had changed.
People were categorized into four groups based on their diet. Around 53 percent of them were regular meat-eaters. 44 percent of participants were low meat-eaters. 2 percent of participants were classified as pescatarians, while 2 percent were vegetarians. There wasn't enough time to study vegan and vegetarian separately.
We adjusted our analyses to take into account other factors that might increase the risk of cancer.
Compared with regular meat-eaters, we found the risk of developing any type of cancer was lower for low meat-eaters, pescatarians and vegetarians.
We wanted to know how diet affected the risk of cancer in the UK.
Low meat-eaters had a 9 percent lower risk of colorectal cancer than regular meat-eaters. A higher intake of processed meat is associated with higher colorectal cancer risk.
We found that vegetarians and pescatarians had a lower risk of colorectal cancer.
Women who ate a vegetarian diet had an 18 percent lower risk of breast cancer than women who ate meat. The lower average body weight seen in vegetarian women was the reason for the association.
Being overweight or obese after menopause increases the risk of breast cancer. There were no significant associations betweenpescatarians and low meat-eaters.
Compared to regular meat-eaters, pescatarians and vegetarians had a lower risk of cancer. It is not clear if this is due to diet or if it is due to other factors.
As this was an observational study and we only observed changes to a participant's health without asking them to make changes to their diet, we can't be sure if the links we've seen are caused by diet or not.
We adjusted the results to take into account other important causes of cancer, such as smoking and alcohol consumption, but other factors may still have influenced the results we observed.
Most of the people in our study were white. We don't know if the same link will be seen in other ethnic groups. It will be important for future studies to look at a more diverse population, as well as larger numbers of vegetarians, pescatarians and vegan to explore whether the link between lower cancer risk and these types of diet is as strong as we observed.
It is important to note that eliminating meat does not make your diet healthier. Some people who follow a vegetarian or pescatarian diet may still eat low amounts of fruits and vegetables and high amounts of refined and processed foods, which can lead to poor health.
Most evidence shows an association between lower cancer risk and vegetarian or pescatarian diet, and it seems that greater consumption of vegetables, fruits and whole grains may explain this lower risk.
Red and processed meat is linked with higher colorectal cancer risk. More evidence is needed to fully explore the reasons for the results.
The link between red and processed meat and cancer risk is well known, which is why people aim to limit the amount of these foods they consume. It is recommended that people consume a diet rich in whole grains, vegetables, fruits and beans as well as maintain a healthy body weight in order to reduce their risk of cancer.
The University of Oxford has a Cancer Epidemiology Unit that has a PhD Researcher, a Senior Nutritional Epidemiologist, and a Professor of Epidemiology.
This article is free to use under a Creative Commons license. The original article is worth a read.
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