Does Red Meat Cause Colorectal Cancer?

Just about everyone has been effect by cancer in one way or another. Whether a family member, friend, or even they have had the disease themselves. Most people understand that family history, sun exposer, occupation, and even chemicals can cause a certain type of cancer. In this paper I will talk about a potential cancer causing habit that is not discussed as much as it should; diet. More specifically, this essay will be focused on red meat vs vegetarian consumption, and whether or not they cause colorectal cancer.
Keywords: colorectal cancer, cancer, vegetarian, red meat diet, diet vs. cancer Introduction
Colorectal cancer is among the leading type of cancers in North America (Joshi et al., 2015). The point of this paper is to decide whether
(2015) sought out to find the correlation between vegetarian diets and colorectal cancer. Over a five year period, 77,659 participants, after exclusions, were enlisted to take part in the study. From a quantitative food frequency questionnaire with over 200 different types of food, researchers were able to place participants into one of five different types of eating habits (Orlich et al., 2015). The participants were then combined into two groups. Group one was composed of vegans, vegetarians, pescovegetarians, semi-vegetarians, and group two was just non-vegetarians. Furthermore, each participant was sent a questionnaire regarding previous medical history and health habits. Incidents of cancer were gathered from state registries, and by a questionnaire sent to participants every other year.
The results over the course of seven years showed that vegetarians had a lower chance of getting colorectal cancer. Furthermore, vegetarians were less likely to smoke, drink, develop diseases, or have a previous history of cancers. This could be because the higher intake of fiber, reduced consumption of carcinogens like heterocyclic amines found in meat, reduce risk of growths related to insulin spikes, and having an overall lover BMI (Orlich et al.,
The purpose of these studies were to find a correlation between people’s eating habits and the risk for getting colorectal cancer. The majority of the finding from these studies is that people who consume less meat have a slight, if any, decreased risk in getting CRC. There needs to be further studies and larger cohorts to provide further information and evidence between the two. There are just too many variables when looking into why a personal may or may not develop colorectal cancer. Some instances could be because how the meat is prepared and the cooking style used. They may unthaw meat using the microwave, not rotate often, or allow the meat to burn (Joshi et al,. 2015). In other instances, like in Orlich et al. (2015) and Key et al., (2014) it could be how often a person consumes meat, or if they consume it at all like vegetarians and