Cutting down on eating meat could dramatically slash men's prostate cancer risk

Cutting down on eating meat could dramatically slash men’s risk of prostate cancer, new research suggests.

A Oxford University study using data on 472,000 British adults uncovered a 31% lower risk among vegetarians, compared to people who ate meat more than five times a week.

While the risk of a host of cancers was slightly lower among non-meat eaters, prostate cancer showed the starkest results.

Men who just ate fish were at 20% lower risk of developing prostate cancer than those who ate meat at least five times weekly.

Participants aged between 40 and 70 years were recruited to the UK Biobank study between 2006 and 2010.

Researchers calculated the incidence of new cancers that developed in the next 11 years by tracking health records.

They found that the overall cancer risk was 2% lower among those who ate meat five times or less per week, 10% lower among those who ate fish but not meat, and 14% lower among vegetarians and vegans.

Author Cody Watling, who specialises in research in to diet, hormones and the risk of cancers at Oxford, said: “We were surprised by the substantially lower risk of prostate cancer in vegetarians.

“Previous evidence has suggested that vegetarians and pescatarians may have a lower risk of developing cancer.

“However the evidence for a lower risk of developing specific types of cancer has been inconclusive.”

The researchers used polling of UK Biobank participants for how often the ate meat and tracked their health records.

They accounted for other factors known to affect risk, such as diabetes status, wealth and other lifestyle factors in their analysis.

Some 52% of the participants ate meat more than five times a week and 44% of them ate meat five times a week or less.

Just 2% were pescatarian and another 2% were vegetarian or vegan.

Some 12% of the participants got cancer during the period the study was being carried out.

Researchers said the findings, published in the journal BMC Medicine, could not definitively prove it was the meat intake that was influencing cancer risk.

Researcher Cody Watling added: “Our group in Oxford is doing further research to assess the risk of cancer across diet groups with larger numbers of vegetarians and pescatarians.”

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