While the month of “blue March” devoted to colorectal cancer screening is in full swing in France, a scientific study published in the journal Internal Medicine is interested in the benefit of a vegetarian diet on the risk of this cancer.
According to his results, removing meat from his plate would reduce the risk of colorectal cancer by 22%.
For seven years, researchers at Loma Linda University in California (United States) followed 77,659 people, vegetarians or not. At the end of the follow-up, 380 participants had contracted colon cancer, and 110 had rectal cancer.
The diet of each participant was then informed by questionnaire, differentiating the omnivores from several types of vegetarianism (veganism, lacto-ovo vegetarianism, pesco-vegetarianism and semi-vegetarianism). After that, the scientists calculated the risk of colorectal cancer based on the preferred diet.
Results: vegetarianism would decrease the risk of developing colorectal cancer by 22%. However, there are variations in this risk depending on the type of vegetarian diet followed. Thus, veganism excluding eggs and dairy products would reduce the risk by 16%, whereas pesco-vegetarianism containing fish and shellfish reduced the risk by 43%. If you want to reduce your likelihood of colorectal cancer as much as possible, it would be better to forget about meat in favor of vegetables and seafood.
If this study simply reveals a correlation link, it nonetheless underlines the importance of a balanced diet low in animal fats in particular.
“We already know that fish had more pronounced effects than white meat, itself more beneficial than red meat, but today this is not yet part of the dietary advice to reduce the risk of colorectal cancer, which is limit eating five fruits and vegetables a day, avoiding saturated fat and exercising for half an hour per week, ”explains Michel Ducreux, head of the gastroenterology department of the Gustave Roussy Institute at the microphone of Metronews.
As a preventive measure, as once the disease has been declared, paying attention to your diet by reducing your meat consumption would a priori only have benefits, as long as the diet is not deficient, specifies the specialist. However, it should be remembered that the risk of colorectal cancer is not only associated with diet, it also depends on genetic factors for example.
Remember that each year, colorectal cancer affects nearly 42,000 people and causes more than 17,500 deaths. Yet, when caught early, it can be cured in 9 out of 10 cases.
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