Vegetarianism and cancer

Vegetarianism and cancer
An analytical study into the relationship between current diet and breast cancer risk was published in 1994. When breast cancer rates and meat and fruit intakes were compared, both were similar in the under-fifties. However, in women over fifty, eating more meat reduced the incidence of breast cancer by 30%, whilst eating more fruit increased breast cancer incidence by 70%.

This may have been because a conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), a fatty acid known to be a powerful anti-cancer agent, is found only in the fat of ruminant animals.

A case control study of over 5000 Italian women was conducted between 1991 and 1994 to assess the influence of high intakes of fat and other macronutrients on breast cancer risk. Dr Franceschi's team found that "The risk of breast cancer decreased with increasing total fat intake . . . whereas the risk increased with increasing intake of available carbohydrates." Foods of vegetable origin tend to have high levels of carbohydrates. That this should be so finds support from Professor Wolfgang Lutz he showed that epidemiological studies failed to support the current belief that fat intake was at the root of coronary disease and cancer and did his own explorations of epidemiological data. His findings show a clear, inverse relationship between diseases of civilisation and the length of time the people of a given region of Europe have had to adapt to the high carbohydrate diet associated with the cultivation of cereal grains that was begun in the Near East, and spread very slowly through Europe.
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