Vegetarian diet lowers risk to five types of cancers—study
A vegetarian diet can lower your risk of many cancers!
According to a study from the University of Oxford, vegetarians have lower risks of five types of cancers: pancreatic, breast, kidney, prostate cancer, and multiple myeloma (or blood cancer).
Based on the findings, compared to meat eaters, vegetarians had a 21% lower risk of pancreatic cancer and a 9% lower risk of breast cancer.
They also have a 12% reduced risk of prostate cancer, 28% lower risk of kidney cancer, and 31% lower risk of multiple myeloma.
The study, however, found no significant correlation between vegetarianism and the risk of colorectal, stomach, liver, lung, endometrial, ovarian, mouth and pharynx, or bladder cancers, or non-Hodgkin lymphoma, leukaemia, and oesophageal adenocarcinoma.
It also found that vegetarians are not entirely cancer risk-free, as they also have almost double the risk of cancer of the esophagus.
Principal researcher of the study, former Oxford Population Health Associate Professor Aurora Perez Cornago, explained the secret to a vegetarian diet.
"Vegetarians typically consume more fruit, vegetables, and fiber than meat eaters and no processed meat, which may contribute to lower risks of some cancers," she said. "The higher risk of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma in vegetarians and bowel cancer in vegans may relate to lower intakes of certain nutrients more abundant in animal foods."
She added that more research is needed to understand the driving forces behind cancer risk in their study.
The study was led by researchers at the Nuffield Department of Population Health's Cancer Epidemiology Unit and funded by the World Cancer Research Fund
It was dubbed as the largest of its kind, as it gathered data from 1.8 million people across the US, UK, Taiwan, and India, including 1.64 million meat eaters, 57,016 poultry eaters, 42,910 pescatarians or fish eaters, 63,147 vegetarians, and 8,849 vegans.
