Led by Cody Watling, a team of Oxford University researchers surveyed 472,377 British adults were participants in the UK Biobank, a large long-term study in the United Kingdom that is investigating genetic and environmental factors in the development of disease.
Participants who were between 40 and 70 years old were asked about their diets, specifically their consumption of meat and fish. After accounting for health conditions like diabetes, lifestyle, and socioeconomic factors the researchers calculated the incidence of cancer over an 11 year period.
They found that 247,571 participants (52 percent) ate meat more than five times per week. 205,382 (44 percent) ate meat five or less times per week. Another 10,696 participants (2 percent) ate fish but not meat and 8,685 (2 percent) ate neither meat nor fish.
Over the 11-year period studied, 54,961 participants (12 percent) were diagnosed with cancer according to UK health records. Among those cancers, there were 5,882 colorectal, 7,537 postmenopausal breast, and 9,501 prostate cancers.
When they analyzed participants who developed cancer they found that overall, those who ate meat less than 6 times per week had a 2 percent lower risk of cancer. Among those who ate fish but not meat had a 10 percent lower risk, and vegans had a 14 percent lower risk of cancer.
Postmenopausal women who ate a vegan diet had an 18 percent lower risk of breast cancer compared to similar women who ate meat more than 5 times per week.
As an observational study, the researchers cannot draw conclusions about whether protein consumption causes cancer, partly because the dietary data may not be representative of the participants’ lifetime dietary habits.
Sources: BMC press release and the journal BMC Medicine
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