Do you need one more excuse not to eat predominantly burgers, wings, and steaks? According to a recent study, men who consume a diet high in plants may have a lower risk of developing colon cancer.
In the American study, researchers looked at 79,952 men’s eating patterns. They discovered that males who ate the most vegetables, whole grains, nuts, and legumes had a 22 percent lower risk of colon cancer than those who ate these foods seldom.
But only for men was this the case. The findings of the study, which were reported on November 29 in BMC Medicine, showed that among the 93,475 women who participated, eating a more plant-based diet didn’t seem to affect their risk of developing bowel cancer.
Additionally, some males were more significantly protected by a plant-based diet than others. For people who identified as Japanese, Native Hawaiian, and white, the cancer risk reduction linked with this sort of diet was greater than for people who identified as Black or Latino.
The senior study author, Song-Yi Park, PhD, of the cancer epidemiology programme at University of Hawaii Cancer Center in Honolulu, and her colleagues concluded that the results “highlight the potential importance of the quality of plant foods on the prevention of colorectal cancer and suggest that the benefits from plant-based diets may vary by sex, race and ethnicity, and anatomic subsite of tumour.”
Researchers questioned participants how frequently they ate and drank 180 various kinds of meals and beverages as well as questions about portion sizes in order to analyse eating patterns in the study. Animal goods like meat, dairy, eggs, fish, and shellfish were among the dietary groups examined by researchers. They also looked at more nutritious plant-based foods like vegetables and legumes as well as less nutritious plant-based foods like french fries and highly processed grains.
Among research participants, there were a total of 4,976 incidences of colorectal cancer over an average follow-up duration of nearly two decades.
The study team concluded that although it wasn’t intended to demonstrate if or how particular foods can cause cancer, it’s probable that people who ate better plant-based diets consumed more foods high in fibre, antioxidants, and other nutrients linked to a lower cancer risk. On the other hand, it’s also conceivable that those who ate the most red and processed meats as well as refined grains also ate more carbohydrates and fats, which have been linked to a higher risk of developing various malignancies.
The study’s examination of all varieties of animal proteins as a single food group has some drawbacks. This indicates that they didn’t distinguish between foods linked to a lower risk of developing cancer like fish and dairy and less nutritious ones like red and processed meats. The lack of information on participants’ long-term eating habits made it impossible to assess whether any changes over time may have affected their chance of developing cancer, which is another limitation of the new study.
According to a study published in the June 2019 issue of the International Journal of Cancer, colorectal cancer is the third most prevalent kind of cancer and the fourth leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide, accounting for over 1.8 million new cases and more than 881,000 fatalities in 2018.