As we’ve recently covered, colorectal cancer has been showing a troubling rise across a broad range of age demographics. In response, new screening tools and approaches are being developed to combat the disturbing trend.
Now, a team of UK and US-based researchers believe that one key dietary adjustment could help decrease colorectal cancer cases – cutting back on processed meats.
Researchers from the University of Edinburgh’s Global Academy of Agriculture and Food Systems and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, have developed a simulation tool to, “estimate the health impacts of reducing consumption of processed meat and unprocessed red meat.”
The team estimated how changes in meat intake affect the risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, colorectal cancer, and death among adults. The impacts were examined in the overall population, as well as separately based on age, sex, household income, and ethnicity.
The researchers concluded that for US adults, reducing consumption of processed meat by 30% – roughly 10 slices of bacon per week – would result in 53,300 fewer colorectal cancer cases over a 10-year period, as well as preventing more than 350,000 cases of diabetes, and 92,500 fewer cases of cardiovascular disease over a decade.
