[501] in Vegetarian_Support_Group
Re: red meat and cancer
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Lewis Haddow)
Wed Apr 12 05:04:36 1995
From: Lewis Haddow <9235367@arran.sms.ed.ac.uk>
To: VSG@MIT.EDU
Date: Wed, 12 Apr 1995 10:02:36 +0000
>
> > It is in older vegetarians that differences in cancer
> >statistics are most likely to show up,
> >vegetarianism being a new thing.
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> Hello? Just how old do you think vegetarianism is?
>
I KNEW I would be misinterpreted. You cannot deny, there has been a
very marked rise in vegetarianism in white western culture in the
last few decades. At the moment, the US and Europe probably have the
highest proportion of vegetarians since detailed medical records
began. True?
OF COURSE I know that vegetarianism has been around for as long as
human culture - what do you take me for?
To be more explicit (I hope):
For a sample of people to be deemed as having lower rates of any
disease, they must be compared to a control sample.
Let's say 1000 vegetarians of all ages were compared to
1000 carnivores of the same ages. Very few of the youngest 500
members of both groups would have cancer, so no difference could
there be detected. In the older 500 carnivores, there would be a
substantial percentage of cancer patients. Thus the difference between
the two groups would be in the older vegetarians. As vegetarianism
has only recently experienced a rise in popularity, most of these
older vegetarians would have become veggie in their later lives,
probably for health reasons. So, how can we know that their lower
cancer rate is attributable to vegetarian diet and not, say, stopping
smoking.
Just as an aside, I know some vegetarians with pretty poor nutrition.
Lewis.
