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One dietary choice that has grown in popularity over the last few decades could actually have more health benefits than previously understood, as new research outlines a dramatic drop in risk for five key types of cancer.
It's hard to know what to eat these days for many, as it seems like many of the most common types of food have a negative impact on your health despite perhaps appearing to be a relatively positive choice on the surface.
One of the biggest revelations in recent years has been the increased cancer risk that certain types of food and drink can cause, leading people to adapt their diets to save their health in the long term.
Recent studies have identified a major new discovery when it comes to the relationship between your diet and the risk of developing cancer, however, suggesting that cutting out one type of food could reduce the chances of developing the disease by up to 30 percent.
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As reported by the BBC, researchers at the University of Oxford have unveiled news that vegetarians and vegans have a significantly lower risk of developing five types of cancer compared to meat eaters, suggesting that it could possibly be the ideal way forward for many.
These results include risk decreases of 21% for pancreatic cancer, 9% for breast cancer, 12% for prostate cancer, 28% for kidney cancer, and 31% for multiple myeloma.
It does also very much depend on the type of meat that you cut out too, as both red meat and processed deli meats hold a significantly higher risk of things like pancreatic, stomach, and bowel cancer so cutting them out would make a significant difference.
This sentiment is echoed by Tim Key, co-author of the study published in the British Journal of Cancer, as he outlined:
"My feeling is the differences are more likely to be related to meat itself than to simply vegetarians eating more healthy foods. But that's sort of an opinion we haven't looked at directly."
Amy Hirst, health information manager at Cancer Research UK, outlined that "more research in larger, more diverse populations is needed to better understand these patterns and what's causing them," adding that "when it comes to reducing cancer risk, keeping a healthy, balanced diet overall matters more than individual foods."
You certainly can't go wrong when it comes to reducing the amount of meat that you consume at the very least, and introducing a higher variety of healthier foods into your diet on a weekly basis.
The study did also suggest that there could be a link between vegetarian/vegan diets and oesophageal cancer, possessing an increased risk of nearly double, but this could also be due to the lack of certain key nutrients within some meat-free diets and similarly not entirely reflective of the decision to opt for them entirely.
