Did you know if you want to reduce your risk of cancer, you should join a study. Promoters of vegetarianism have been singing the praises of a report on two studies in the British Journal of Cancer. The report notes two prospective studies, the Epic-Oxford cohort and the Oxford Vegetarian study, examining cancer incidence among vegetarians. The report studied 61566 British men and women, comprising 32403 meat eaters, 8562 non-meat eaters who ate fish and 20601 vegetarians. The average follow-up was 12.2 years. Vegetarians had less bladder, stomach and blood cancer than meat and fish eaters. However vegetarians had higher rates of colon, rectal and cervical cancers. These numbers as with many studies are deceiving.
According to this report the chance of a meat eater developing bladder cancer is 1 in 518; for vegetarians it was 1 in 1677; for fish eaters it was 1 in 1400. Even though the report shows meat eaters are over three times more likely to develop bladder cancer, it?s still only a .19% chance. Your chance of developing cervical cancer if you?re a meat eater was 1 in 1982; for fish eaters it?s 1 in 890; for vegetarians it?s 1 in 948. Judging by this report, a vegetarian female is twice as likely to develop cervical cancer compared to her meat eating amigo, but still only a .10% chance. The play on numbers in this report is inexcusable but all too common.
The differences in the various cancer rates between the 3 groups overall were insignificant; however the fish eaters were found to have the largest reduced cancer risk. Curiously, which you don?t see reported in mainstream sources, there was no difference found in all cause mortality between the diet groups. However, all the diet groups had a 50% less reduced risk of all cause mortality compared to the general population. Hmmmm.
In another analysis of two studies, the Oxford Vegetarian Study and the Health Food Shoppers Study, researchers compared the mortality of vegetarians and non-vegetarians. Mortality rates were 52% and 59% of the general population respectively. However, strangely unreported by vegetarians, there was no difference in mortality rates between vegetarians and non-vegetarians in either study. Researchers concluded that the benefits found in the subjects of both studies compared to the general population may be attributed to non-dietary factors.
