Monday, July 6, 2009

yum today, healthy tomorrow

Good morning everyone, I slept in today since I have the day off from work... making for the longest celebratory fourth of July weekend I think I've ever had! Oh and as we're on the topic of holidays, Happy belated Canada to my friends up north :). For yesterday's breakfast I stuck to blue as my primary patriotic color. Now, ready for your AM news dose?
A study in the British Journal of Cancer found that while 33% of the general population will develop cancer during their lifetime, for those who don't eat meat that risk is reduced to about 29%. These researchers from universities in the UK and New Zealand followed 61,566 British men and women including meat-eaters, those who ate fish but not meat, and those who ate neither meat nor fish. Overall, vegetarians had notably fewer cancers of the stomach and bladder, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and multiple myeloma. The reduction was less impressive for fish-eaters with all of these cancers except for that of the stomach. Researches have hypothesized that potential mechanisms could include viruses and mutation-causing compound in meat or alternatively that vegetables confer special protection.
But the same reduction for vegetarians was not found with bowel cancers nor with cervical cancer of which fish-eaters and vegetarians had twice the relative risk of meat-eaters. The original BBC article can be found here. I usually follow a vegetarian diet, about 50% raw, sometimes vegan, but I do have the occasional fish when eating out. Does health influence the way you eat?

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