According to a study published in the Open Access Journal, eating meat five times a week or less is associated with a lower overall risk of cancer. BMC Medicine.
Cody Watling and colleagues from the University of Oxford, United Kingdom, analyzed data collected from 472,377 British adults recruited to the UK Biobank between 2006 and 2010 to explore the relationship between diet and cancer risk. The participants, who were between the ages of 40 and 70, reported how often they ate meat and fish, and the researchers used health records to calculate new cancer cases that developed over an average of 11 years. They accounted for diabetes status and socioeconomic, socioeconomic, and lifestyle factors in their analysis. 247,571 (52%) participants ate meat more than five times per week, 205,382 (44%) participants ate meat five or fewer times per week, 10,696 (2%) ate fish but not meat, and 8,685 (2%) were vegetarian or vegan. . 54,961 participants (12%) developed cancer during the study period.
Researchers found that overall cancer risk was 2% lower among those who ate meat five times a week or less, 10% lower among those who ate fish but not meat, and 14% lower among vegetarians and vegans. Meat more than five times per week. When comparing the incidence of certain cancers with the participants’ diets, the authors found that those who ate meat five times or less per week had a 9% lower risk of colorectal cancer than those who ate meat more than five times per week. They also found that those who ate fish but not meat had a 20% lower risk of prostate cancer and a 31% lower risk in those who followed a vegetarian diet than those who ate meat more than five times a week. Postmenopausal women who followed a vegetarian diet had an 18% lower risk of breast cancer than those who ate meat more than five times a week. However, studies have shown that vegetarian women tend to have a lower body mass index (BMI) than women who eat meat.
The researchers caution that the observational nature of their study does not allow conclusions about a causal relationship between diet and cancer risk. Additionally, as UK Biobank dietary data was collected at a single time-point, rather than a continuous period, it may not be representative of participants’ lifetime diet.
The authors suggest that future research could investigate the relationship between a diet with little or no meat and individual cancer risk in larger populations with longer follow-up periods.