Meat Linked with Cancer

[anthrax]

I will still eat meat, but.....

Meat Linked with Cancer in Study
Reuters
Dec 20 2001 8:07AM

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - People who eat a meat-laden diet have more than triple the average risk of esophageal cancer and double the risk of stomach cancer, U.S. researchers reported Thursday.
The report adds to several studies that link eating meat, especially "red" meat such as beef, with certain cancers. Colon cancer has been the most strongly linked with a high-meat diet.

The study of people living in Nebraska found that those who ate the most meat had 3.6 times the risk of esophageal cancer and double the risk of stomach cancer when compared to people eating what the researchers considered a healthy diet.

People who ate a lot of dairy products, who tended also to eat a lot of meat, had double the risk of both cancers, the researchers report in the January issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Mary Ward, Honglei Chen and colleagues at the National Cancer Institute, Tufts University in Boston and elsewhere surveyed 124 people with stomach cancer, 124 people with esophageal cancer and 449 people who did not have cancer.

They asked detailed questions about their eating habits, then characterized their diets as being "healthy," "high meat," "high milk," high in salty snacks, heavy on desserts and heavy on white bread.

The so-called healthy diet had the highest amounts of fruits, vegetables and whole grains and generally matched the government recommendations that people eat at least five servings of fruit and vegetables a day, up to 10 servings of grains, breads and pasta and just two to three small servings of meat.

The healthy eating group -- 21 percent of those surveyed -- also generally ate the fewest calories.

"In contrast with this healthy dietary pattern, the high-meat dietary pattern included much higher intakes of meats and much lower intakes of fruits, bread and cereals," the researchers wrote in their report.

They said 33 percent of stomach cancer patients and 35 percent of esophageal cancer patients ate either the high-meat or high-milk diets.

 

[OMEGA]

thanks.

 

[PwB]

http://westonaprice.org/myths_truths/myths_truths_beef.html

Does beef cause cancer?
What about the accusation that beef causes cancer, in particular cancer of the colon? The genesis of this myth involves more than just muddied thinking, but actual skulduggery. In 1965 an influential physician, Ernst Wynder, took the data for the mostly processed vegetable oils, called them animal fat (which they were not) and compared them with worldwide colon cancer mortality.6 The table he produced showed high rates of colon cancer in European countries and low rates of colon cancer in Japan, and concluded that there was a positive effect, in other words, that saturated fat, the kind found in beef, caused colon cancer. What the data actually showed was that consumption of polyunsaturated vegetable oils, not saturated animal fats, was associated with the incidence of colon cancer. And Wynder forgot to mention that Asians have much higher rates than Americans of other types of cancers, particularly cancers of the liver, pancreas, stomach, esophagus and lungs.

Then in 1973, William Haenszel and his colleagues from the National Cancer Institute reported the findings from a study that relied on dietary recall and lacked matched controls—in other words, a very poorly designed study.7 The researchers stated that they found a relationship between beef and colon cancer that fit the earlier work of Wynder. Actually, what they really found was that those westernized Japanese Americans who said they consumed lots of macaroni, green beans and peas, as well as beef, had the highest rates of colon cancer; while traditional Japanese Americans who said they consumed lots of dried cuttlefish, Chinese peas, bamboo shoots, rice and fermented soy products had the highest rates of colon cancer. This second-rate and inconclusive study is firmly fixed in the consciousness of the scientific community as providing evidence for the assertion that beef causes colon cancer.

Two American studies conducted in the 1990’s have found a higher risk of colon cancer among those who eat red meat.8 However, no study done in Europe has ever shown an association between meat consumption and cancer.9 This suggests that European sausage and luncheon meat, included in the rubric of “meat consumption,” are prepared by traditional methods that require few additives, while the similar products in the United States contain many carcinogenic preservatives and flavorings. Unfortunately, the American Cancer Society’s 1996 recommendation that Americans cut down on their consumption of meat—particularly fatty meat—in order to avoid cancer makes no distinction between fresh meats and those that have been embalmed with modern chemicals.

While two US studies have implicated meat consumption as a cause of colon cancer, there are several that contradict these findings. In 1975, Rowland Philips compared Seventh-Day Adventists physicians, who do not eat meat, with non-Seventh Day Adventist physicians, and found that the vegetarian doctors had higher rates of gastrointestinal and colon-rectal cancer deaths.10 National Cancer Institute data show that Argentina, with very high levels of beef consumption, has significantly lower rates of colon cancer than other western countries where beef consumption is considerably lower.11 A 1997 study published in the International Journal of Cancer found that increased risk of colon and rectal cancer was positively associated with consumption of bread, cereal dishes, potatoes, cakes, desserts and refined sugars, but not with eggs or meat.12 And a 1978 study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute found no greater risk of colon cancer, regardless of the amounts of beef or other meats ingested.13 The study also found that those who ate plenty of cruciferous vegetables, such as cabbage, Brussels sprouts and broccoli, had lower rates of colon cancer. So just because it’s all right to eat beef doesn’t mean you shouldn’t eat your broccoli.

Actually, we know one of the mechanisms whereby colon cancer is initiated, and it does not involve meat per se. Colon cancer occurs when high levels of dietary vegetable oils and hydrogenated fats, along with certain carcinogens, are acted on by certain enzymes in the cells lining the colon, leading to tumor formation.14 This explains the fact that in industrialized countries, where there are many carcinogens in the diet and where consumption of vegetable oils and carcinogens is high, some studies have correlated meat-eating with colon cancer; but in traditional societies, where vegetable oils are absent and the food is free of additives, meat-eating is not associated with cancer.

Riding piggy back on the alleged association of beef with colon cancer are supposed links with other cancers, such as breast cancer. Here the evidence shows a similarly inconsistent pattern. Cancer is a disease of rich countries where numerous factors can be fingered—altered fats, fabricated foods, low levels of protective nutrients, high levels of carcinogens—and rich countries consume lots of beef. But association is not the same as cause. Countries where there are more telephones have more cancer, but that does not mean that telephones cause cancer. Fat consumption in general also gets the blame for high rates of breast cancer. But a recent survey showed that women on lowfat diets have just as much breast cancer as those on high fat diets.15

 

[PwB]

I'd love to see the correlation between meat and cancer with people who don't also have a high sugar and vegetable oil intake, like americans do. That would make the study invalid b/c it's only one of many factors, and eating a lot of (especially fatty meat) along with a lot of sugar is surely a great way to increase your risk.

 

[chillin408]

I agree with the other responders to this thread. The "Meat Linked with Cancer in Study" article is grossly vague and does not prove anything:

First, just saying "meat" is extremely general because there is a lot of different meats, and a lot of different compositions within those meats. The article stated "especially 'red" meat," but how can they determine this with the super general study they did? How can they determine anything, from this type of epidemiological data? The other articles epidemiological data contradicted the data from the first article, so obviously there is nothing but extreme generalizations that can be concluded from this data. This is similar to how some people use (and some still do) mention that because certain groups of people who eat high-protein diets have more incidents of kidney conditions and osteoporosis, but in the more controlled studies, those accusations that some people concluded were not supported by the better controlled studies. Maybe this kind of data general observations can be useful in starting an investigation, but I think conclusions made from general stuff data cannot prove any specific conclusions.

I'd also like to see a study like PwB suggested, because many people now agree that high bad fat diets with high GI carbs are worse than bad fats with good carbs.

Also, I am wondering, are non-trans,non-hydrogenated vegetable oils correlated with cancer? even if this is true, it does not provide anything specific, since their is so many different vegetable oils, etc. Also, the meat/cancer article talks bad about meat, even if it was one spefic meat, what compenent in the meat is bad?? , that is like saying Cannabis is bad, but without stateing what inside of it is detrimental. This is stuff is just too general.

 

[javaguru]

From reading the dietary intake of people in the study who had the high incidences of cancer the phrase, "couch potato fat ass" came to mind. Is it surprising to anyone these people are diseased?

 

[playdo]

I thought this study was done on burnt meat..and the carcinogenic effects in chared meat