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Vegetarian diet would reduce cancer risk, says the recent research study!!

Posted on: 16/Mar/2022 9:39:22 AM
If you are a vegetarian, then this piece of information would make you feel happy!!

For a long time it was believed that a vegetarian diet could be very useful for us and we would be able to avoid certain health issues by consuming vegetarian food. 

Now, further evidence has come out in the favour of consuming vegetarian food. It was mentioned by a senior dietician belonging to Fortis Hospital that a vegetarian diet would lower cholesterol levels plus it would reduce BP, reduce metabolic disease like obesity, diabetes etc and reduce the risk of death due to ischemic heart disease etc.

Now, the United Kingdom based World Cancer Research Fund, Cancer Research and Oxford Population Health have conducted a research study and they have found out that vegetarians are at lesser risk of getting cancer when compared with non-vegetarian food eaters.

For the research study more than 450,000 people in the UK BioBank were taken into consideration by the researchers. It is noteworthy that those who took part were classified by the level of meat and fish consumption.  The researchers have classified the regular meat eaters as those who consumed processed meat, red meat and poultry more than 5 times a week. Low meat eaters were classified as those who ate meat less or equal to 5 times per week. Information collected is that the research team also analysed those who did not eat meat but ate fish. Vegetarians formed the final group and they ever consumed meat or fish.

It has been brought to light that consuming vegetarian foods can significantly reduce the chances of developing not only colo-rectal cancer but also would reduce overall cancer incidence in the population. From the study it was clear that when compared to the meat eaters those who ate less meat had 2% lower chance of getting any type of cancer and by 10 percent for those who ate fish only but not eat meat. The vegetarian food eaters would have 14% less risk of getting cancer.

The findings also revealed that in comparison with regular meat eaters, low meat eaters had 9% lower risk of developing bowel cancers. When compared to regular meat eating women, those women who ate only vegetarian foods had a lower risk of 18% postmenopausal breast cancer. It is believed that the lower body mass index present in vegetarian women plays an important role in reducing the postmenopausal breast cancer risk. Truth is that those who ate just fish only and those who ate vegetarian foods had a low chance of prostate cancer of 20% and 31% respectively.

As per Dr. Aryan Basu, senior consultant, radiation oncology at Kolkata based HCGEKO Cancer Centre consuming vegetarian foods would decrease the chances of developing not only colo-rectal or gastro-intestinal cancers but also reduce overall cancer incidence in the population. It is important to note that consuming a vegetarian diet would reduce cancecer risk by 10 to 12 percent across different sites. Persons consuming vegetarian diets had 22percent lower chances of getting colo-rectal cancers than those who eat non-vegetarian foods.