A New Study Suggests That Cutting These Foods Out Of Your Life Might Decrease Your Risk Of Cancer
A new study from BMC Medicine titled “Risk of cancer in regular and low meat-eaters, fish-eaters, and vegetarians” measured cancer risk in citizens who participated via the UK Biobank.
In the report’s abstract, its researchers stated their goal was to “assess the associations of vegetarian and non-vegetarian diets with risks of all cancer, colorectal cancer, postmenopausal breast cancer, and prostate cancer and to explore the role of potential mediators between these associations.”
This means that a group of nearly 500,000 participants—ranging from meat-eaters to low meat-eaters to fish-eaters to vegetarians—without any apparent signs of cancerous cells were included in the study.
The primary types of cancer under discussion were colorectal cancer, colon cancer, breast cancer, and prostate cancer.
Since the vegetarians studied tended to eat more fruits and vegetables or maintain plant-based diets, researchers hypothesized decreased risk of certain “site-specific” cancers.
The research also referenced findings in Oxford that support this theory.
“In the two largest previous prospective studies following vegetarians, EPIC-Oxford and AHS-2 found that being a vegetarian was associated with a 10% and 8% lower risk of all cancer than being a meat-eater, respectively, after adjusting for lifestyle risk factors and BMI.”
Cultural conversations around the BMI, or Body Mass Index, have found it a fraught measurement tool.
This is because it does not consider cultural biases against a broad range of healthy body types and favors Eurocentric standards of health.
Kalim – stock.adobe.com
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In this study, researchers found that pescatarians had a 10 percent lower risk of cancer than their counterparts who ate meat five or more times per week.
Likewise, vegetarians had a whopping 14 percent lower risk than the meat-eater group and 12 percent lower than the low meat-eaters.
However, it should be noted that vegetarian or low meat-eating lifestyles are typically accommodated better in higher socioeconomic settings, and eating healthy can be difficult for those living at or below the poverty line.
Lower-income is also positively correlated to smoking rates and lifestyle factors that could lead to localized cancers.
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