Being a vegetarian can cut your risk of cancer by a half, claim scientists

[ElenorRigby]

"More than 61,000 people aged between 20 and 89, roughly half of whom were vegetarian, were followed for more than 12 years in the British arm of the research which is supported by Cancer Research UK."
"vegetarians were 12 per cent less likely to contract cancer than their meat eating counterparts"
"For some cancers like leukaemia, stomach and bladder cancers the difference was even more striking with up to 45 per cent fewer non-meat eaters contracting the diseases than carnivores."
Wow very conclusive study, maybe there should be a campaign to switch children to a meat free diet!

Looking again at the blood type book it suggests you should be vegetarian if you are blood group A, otherwise you are at greater risk of cancer, heart disease (apparently).

Blood group O needs to eat meat apparently (suited to high protein low carb diet).

I always check here when I read health articles, just to be sure.

'Interesting that people object so strongly to the message of this study and are determined to pick holes in it. Why is that? '

It is a useless study! We have no idea what they are comparing. If it is vegetarians v people who eat meat pies, burgers etc and few vegetables of course they come out healthier! If they are comparing with those who eat a lot of white fish/oily fish, meat, pulses and tons of fruit and veg, I don't think that they would. We would have to know exactly what each sample were eating before we take any message at all from it.

I hvae no particular personal bone to pick with the idea

but I am a researching academic, so I would never accept any study until I have gone over it and picked holes in it, which I haven't got time to do tonight

but from the posts on here it does sound very much like it is the starting point rather than the answer, a kind of signpost saying 'more work needs to be done in this area'

rather than the conclusive answer

Whoa, whoa, whoa. So, taking these results at face value, if blood, stomach, ovarian and bladder cancer risk is halved, yet overall vegetarian/fish eaters' risk is only reduced by a piddling 12%, then surely some other cancer risks must be increased? They mentioned colon and cervical were slightly higher among vegetarians. What are the others?