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Do you think there’s a causal link between meat consumption (regardless of type) and cancer?
I have no opinion either way nor the slightest level of expertise to have an educated guess, just curious.
Is Coffee healthy ?
Ernie1 Do you think there’s a causal link between meat consumption (regardless of type) and cancer?
Yes but not the one you might have been led to believe. The more red meat we eat, the LESS cancer and LOWER all cause mortality. What’s killing us isn’t Red meat, its (mainly) ultra processed food, poor sleep and physical INactivity. In other words lifestyle. But that’s not what Big Food or Big Pharma want us to believe
Thanks for the reply. That correlates with experiences in the family so good to hear it confirmed by an expert.
Cancer is a product of
- genetics
- age
- environment
- diagnostics
We see more cancer because:
- We’re generally living longer
- our environment is quite different and we are exposed to more things (chemicals, hormones, artificial ingredients, radiation emitters, foreign holidays etc..)
- we have much better diagnostics for cancer, which we didn’t have many years ago (in the olden days people died, often they never knew why)
- Genetics - not sure but the gene pool doesn’t have weaker genomes weeded out as it did in the olden days, this must have a knock on effect over many generations.
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DavecUK I agree Dave but what is the primary driver? Why has cancer gone from extremely rare to incredibly common in 120y during which town air is cleaner and smoking rates have dropped massively? There’s a fascinating book called RAVENOUS by Sam Apple. It’s about the theory of cancer and the life of Otto Warburg. He of the Warburg effect. He discovered that cancer cells have a different metabolism and originated the idea of cancer as a metabolic disease. More here
Ernie1 in many ways it’s a statement of the bleedin obvious! Two million years of evolution. We are designed to consume animals and specifically red meat. Why would it kill us! Evolution isn’t stupid!!
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With the deepest respect, i think the basic assumption underneath your premise that cancer in ancient times was vanishingly rare, is flawed. Cancer and heart disease were with the ancients too all the way to the present day and the rates were not appreciably lower - especially for heart disease. We just don’t have enough historical data to support your hypothesis…on the contrary historical writings show that ancient medical texts were well acquainted with tumours and had extensive explicit references to cancerous tumours…if canxers were not common this would not.be the case…https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ijc.29134
Further, the evidence of traditional societies throughout the world show that there is no society famed for producing longevity that subsists predominantly on meat. Instead plant based diet is the predominant source of calories. If we ignore that, it will be at our peril…
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You said “in many ways it’s a statement of the bleedin obvious! Two million years of evolution. We are designed to consume animals and specifically red meat. Why would it kill us! Evolution isn’t stupid!!”
However human teeth, jaw and digestive tract were designed to be omnivorous, not carnivorous.
https://www.biologyonline.com/articles/humans-omnivores
Furthermore chimpanzees have the nearest teeth to us (though their canines are far more pronounced) and though they do eat meat and can even be cannibalistic on other chimpanzees, meat typically only forms 6 per cent of their diet with insects forming another 4 per cent. Plant based foods form the other 90 per cent! Figs alone account for 50 per cent of their diet…
https://a-z-animals.com/blog/what-do-chimpanzees-eat/
So if chimpanzees that have more carnivorous type teeth than humans only eat meat as 6 per cent of their diet, how can humans be assumed to be designed to eat predominantly meat based diets?
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Grahamsphillips I agree Dave but what is the primary driver? Why has cancer gone from extremely rare to incredibly common in 120y during which town air is cleaner and smoking rates have dropped massively?
Well the reasons are for pretty much everything I mentioned, but especially diagnostics. How common were PET scanners 40 years ago, or cat scans 60 y ago, X-ray machines 100 years ago. When did they start testing for blood markers, or genetic predisposition.
DavecUK Well the reasons are for pretty much everything I mentioned, but especially diagnostics. How common were PET scanners 40 years ago, or cat scans 60 y ago, X-ray machines 100 years ago. When did they start testing for blood markers, or genetic predisposition.
Except you don’t need a pet scanner to diagnose cancer - the PET simply diagnoses it earlier.. which is crucially important to early treatment but has nothing to do with incidence. Go back 100+ years and incidence was incredibly low. Despite cleaner air and MUCH less smoking in the last 50 years, the incidence of cancer continues to grow, to the point its no2 killer in the UK and no 1 in some developed economies. Root cause? What I call The Trifecta of Evil. A diet laden with sugar, processed carbs and seed oils. Of course those aren’t the sole courses but they probably explain 95%
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I feel like this thread has gone too far off topic and is inciting a lot of unverified opinions, my own included.
Also potential misinformation, which I’m not sure has a place on CoffeeTime or indeed anywhere.
I’m happy to provide citations for everything I’ve written here @Ernie1 if that helps.
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Grahamsphillips The more red meat we eat, the LESS cancer and LOWER all cause mortality.
I’m not doubting that what’s been said isn’t backed by some sort of research, it’s just this bit
that seems in contrast to advice currently available on the Cancer Research website.
- I agree re PROCSSED meat. Processed foods of any sort increase all cause mortality
- There’s ZERO evidence to support their second and third statements. What you likely dont’ know is the extent to which many charities are bank rolled by big food and big pharma. For example Diabetes UK brought to you with a 500,000 grant from Britvic no less
Read this about WEGOVY and you’ll see what I mean:
On the subject of red meat, countries that have high consumption have lower cancer risks and cancer continued to rise when red meat consumption dropped.
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Not to dispute your point, but out of curiosity,
If CR was bankrolled by big food and big pharma what interest would they have in dissuading meat consumption? Would they not say the opposite or indeed just not say it?
The same thing is on the NHS website:
So big food (ie UPF or Junk Food) is essentially owned by 9 worldwide brands. The huge profits are NOT in Real Food.. they come from the UPF. No way would Big Food want UPF to be recognised as addictive (hence there is no official classification of food addiction in DSM or ICD) or the cause of obesity, cancer and the rest of it. Here’s an article from the BMJ about COKE for example. In fact the BMJ has carried numerous articles like this.. I just picked one at random
https://www.bmj.com/content/364/bmj.k5050
So we can see where the vested interests of the food cos come from
As for Big Pharma: To put it simply, they have no interest in prevention.. they wouldn’t sell any drugs! Of course its much more complicated than that but these are simple truths
Just out of interest I checked on the corporate sponsors of CR UK. Reach your own conclusions!