A vegetarian diet might cut your risk of colorectal cancer by 20 percent, a new study finds.

For fish-eating vegetarians, the protective link was even stronger, researchers said.

Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in the United States. Screening efforts, including colonoscopy, have helped save many lives by detecting precancerous polyps, said the study's lead researcher, Dr. Michael Orlich.

"However, it is even better to prevent cancers from forming in the first place. We call this primary prevention," said Orlich, who is an assistant professor of preventive medicine at Loma Linda University in California. "Diet is a potentially important approach to reduce the risk of developing colorectal cancer."

The new study, which involved more than 77,000 adults, found that people consuming healthy vegetarian diets may have a lower risk of colon and rectal cancers than non-vegetarians, Orlich said.

"Our vegetarians not only ate less meat than the non-vegetarians, but also less sweets, snack foods, refined grains and caloric beverages," he said. And they ate more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans and nuts, he added.

Prior evidence has linked eating red and processed meats to a higher risk of colorectal cancer, and consuming fiber-rich foods to a lower risk, Orlich said.

Nevertheless, Dr. Alfred Neugut, professor of epidemiology at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City, said no one has identified with certainty why a vegetarian diet would reduce the risk for colon cancer.

It's not known whether there is something in vegetables that is protective or whether something in meat is harmful, he said.

Dietary studies can only show an association between cancer and diet, not a cause-and-effect relationship, Neugut said. "That's the problem in dietary studies of cancer. We don't know exactly what the connection is," he said.

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Changing your diet can lower risk of colon cancer

Benefits greatest for fish eaters, researchers say

WebMD News from HealthDay

By Steven Reinberg

HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, March 9, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- A vegetarian diet might cut your risk of colorectal cancer by 20 percent, a new study finds.

For fish-eating vegetarians, the protective link was even stronger, researchers said.

Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in the United States. Screening efforts, including colonoscopy, have helped save many lives by detecting precancerous polyps, said the study's lead researcher, Dr. Michael Orlich.

"However, it is even better to prevent cancers from forming in the first place. We call this primary prevention," said Orlich, who is an assistant professor of preventive medicine at Loma Linda University in California. "Diet is a potentially important approach to reduce the risk of developing colorectal cancer."

The new study, which involved more than 77,000 adults, found that people consuming healthy vegetarian diets may have a lower risk of colon and rectal cancers than non-vegetarians, Orlich said.

"Our vegetarians not only ate less meat than the non-vegetarians, but also less sweets, snack foods, refined grains and caloric beverages," he said. And they ate more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans and nuts, he added.

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Vegetarian Diet May Lower Colon Cancer Risk, Study Suggests

14 February 2015 | Food | By: Sejal Sukhadwala

In this series,we review restaurants from an entirely vegetarian angle. While some restaurants will be specifically vegetarian, others will be mainstream. Well be tasting everything from veggie burgers, to posh meat-free menus. Along the way, well try to find out, as far as possible, whether chicken stock, cheese made from animal rennet, gelatine, fish sauce and so on are not lurking in the supposedly vegetarian dishes.

Londonist Rating:

So weve cooked our way through Ottolenghi books in recent years, swooned over the vibrant global flavours magicked by veggie-friendly recipe writers like Marlene Spieler, Louise Pickford and Jane Baxter, and have been dazzled by the genius of Vanilla Black.Is it time for a post-modernist revival of wholesome, wholegrain retro veggie food? Could nut cutlets now become trendy? And what would, say, Cranks and Country Life restaurants be like if they were to open today? These are some of the choice morsels we chewed over during our lunch at this stylish little vegetarian caf in Fitzrovia.

Kin presumably the name refers to Peter and Charlie Meadows, the father and son duo who own the place quietly opened early last summer without fuss or fanfare. Tucked away in a side street behind Goodge Street station, past dozens of more look-at-me restaurants, its a small, unassuming daytime-only caf. The cool, minimalist grey-and-cream interior has a counter at the front on which the food is attractively displayed. You have to queue and pay upfront; staff then heat up the dishes and bring them over.

The daily-changing menu (announced on their Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages) included, on our visit, frittata and burgers with a choice of three salads, leek and potato soup, mixed bean and sweet potato stew, sandwiches, cakes and pastries. A wedge of yellow pepper frittata topped with goats milk brie and sunflower seed sprouts is deliciously savoury and we could happily eat it all day but were disappointed by the inclusion of out-of-season asparagus. Chunky, garnet-coloured beetroot and buckwheat burger, prettily presented on a crinkled savoy cabbage leaf and topped with sliced onions, tomatoes and cucumber, is substantial yet miraculously light and un-stodgy. It has a pleasantly nutty taste and somewhat chewy texture, made silky and slippery by the addition of sliced mushrooms. See, we told you it was old-school: what are frittata and burgers but quiche and nut cutlets in contemporary guises?

Bright rainbow-hued salads are simply beautiful. Theres chunky purple potato with red baby lettuce leaves, green beans and cherry tomatoes with rocket pesto, and spinach, chickpea, celery and cucumber with avocado dressing. (The potato and chickpeas need slightly longer cooking time though.) Theres also grated carrot, beetroot, courgette and sunflower seed salad simply coated in lemon juice and olive oil. You can barely taste any of the dressings, but on the other hand their understated use makes the salads sprightly rather than soggy.

Like in many vegetarian and healthy eating-type places, everything is under-seasoned and tastes austere and virtuous. There are no big flavours, but the food is big-hearted. The ingredients are sparklingly fresh and of high quality, sourced from environmentally-friendly, sustainable companies with a social conscience. Dishes are unpretentious and prepared with a lot of care, attention and an eye for visual appeal. Almost everything is cooked on-site, except for some of the cakes and pastries from Manna Bakery because we dont have a gluten-free kitchen, explained a member of staff. Vegan and gluten-free dishes are clearly marked. A hefty but fluffy wedge of polenta, orange and almond cake gluten-free, as it happens is moist, crumbly and moreish. Topped with glazed almond flakes, it has a good, strong marmalade-y taste that we think comes from whole stewed oranges.

Theyre serious about their coffee, too; though we opted for freshly pressed broccoli, kale, apple and celery juice. Served in a small, reusable glass milk bottle with a straw, it packed a (healthy) punch with its distinctive vegetal, mineral flavour. Staff are sweet-natured one is particularly chirpy and gregarious but service can be a little shaky when its busy. We paid around 20-25 including drinks and tip, but you can easily eat here for less than a tenner. Nut cutlets may never make a comeback, but beetroot and buckwheat burgers are here to stay. Yes, were keen on Kin.

Kin,22 Foley Street, W1W 6DT. Tel: 020 7998 4720.

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Vegetarian London: Kin Caf Review

3 March 2015 | Food | By: Sejal Sukhadwala

In this series,we review restaurants from an entirely vegetarian angle. While some restaurants will be specifically vegetarian, others will be mainstream. Well be tasting everything from veggie burgers, to posh meat-free menus. Along the way, well try to find out, as far as possible, whether chicken stock, cheese made from animal rennet, gelatine, fish sauce and so on are not lurking in the supposedly vegetarian dishes.

Dishoom Kings Cross ground floor entrance

Londonist Rating:

Dishoom burst into Londoners consciousness around five years ago like a well, dishoom. The word means pow! in Bollywood-speak, the sound effect made when heroes and villains throw punches at each other. So dishoom-dishoom films are action movies beloved of everyone from excitable kids to elderly unclejis (and in London, trendy film studies students). What an old movie genre thats a throwback to the 1970s has in common with a completely unrelated restaurant concept, we dont know except that the first four letters of the word are found in both.

The much-loved Dishoom brand (it was voted Yelps UKs best restaurant earlier this year) is a widely-publicised homage to the Irani cafs set up by Zoroastrian Iranian immigrants in the early 20th century in what was then called Bombay. (Dishoom is all about the pre-Independence Bombay; not modern-day Mumbai). Hugely popular between the 1920s and 1960s, these quaint all-day brasseries were clean, affordable places that welcomed all regardless of caste, class, wealth or religious beliefs. So students, taxi drivers, servants and beggars could be found eating alongside upcoming writers, struggling film stars and wealthy memsahibs highly unusual in India at the time. They were furnished with colonial-style bentwood chairs and marble-top tables with glass cabinets displaying freshly made cakes and desserts, and glass jars filled with colourful confectionery and biscuits baked on site.

Then at the start of this century, Indian media began to lament their dwindling numbers, from around 400 in their heyday to currently less than 25. Second and third generation Iranis were getting a good education and moving abroad, the cafs were facing stiff competition from fast-food outlets and more glamorous venues, they were finding it tough to keep the prices low as per their original democratic spirit, and there was in-fighting between the owners. Some were beginning to transform and lose their identity, offering pizza and Chinese food to attract younger customers.

Owned by cousins Shamil and Kavi Thakrar, Dishoom captures this fascinating period in Indian history: its a romanticised nostalgia-fest of design, concept and, to some extent, the food viewed through a 21thcentury London lens. Interestingly, its success has triggered a renewed interest in Irani cafs among the foodies of Mumbai. In reality, however, these eateries were little more than the equivalent of greasy spoons, mostly known for their cakes, biscuits and toast (highly exotic in early 20thcentury India). Their most notable role was in shielding coy courting couples from prying eyes and gossipy auntyjis by providing secluded dining areas.

Dishoom Kings Cross, located beside the new Granary Square development, is the newest branch that opened around four months ago (after the original in Covent Garden in 2010 and Shoreditch in 2012). Much is made of the location, with parallels drawn between the similar Gothic style of St Pancras station and Mumbais Victoria Terminus. Its housed inside a restored Victorian building, a former railway transit shed dating back to 1850. In Indian-speak, its a godown, a warehouse where a large-number of goods once passed between Britain and the Empire, significantly between London and Bombay. In further myth-making for the restaurant, some of Bombays Irani cafs had once started out in similar transit sheds.

Sprawled over four floors, the exceptionally buzzy venue is impressively large, with a reception and a bar on the ground floor (the only brightly-lit area in the building), a dim basement bar, a first floor dining room with curved banquettes overlooking a private dining area, and a chefs table and kitchen on the second floor where you can see the cooking in action. The early 20thcentury transit shed aesthetic includes ornate floor tiles, wicker chairs, ceiling fans, an over-sized railway clock, and photos, posters, signage and replicas of advertisements from colonial India. Its sexy and moodily lit like something out of a movie or an epic novel; and the attention to detail down to the tiniest fixtures and fittings, including taps in the loos is staggering.

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Vegetarian London: Dishoom Kings Cross Restaurant Review

A new study finds a diet dominated by fruits and vegetables -- with a moderate amount of fish -- could cut your risk for colorectal cancers by nearly 45 percent.

Dr. Ryan Williams did not take part in the study but is a colorectal surgeon at Cleveland Clinic.

"Any of the vegetables and fruits that are high in fiber are the ones we are looking for to help clear out the colon and help decrease that risk of colon and rectal cancer," Williams said.

Loma Lind University researchers studied the diets of nearly 78,000 people. They found vegans had a 16 percent lower risk for all colorectal cancers compared to non-vegetarians

Vegetarians had 22 percent lower risk, but it was a pesco-vegetarian diet, or one that includes a moderate amount of fish, that offered the most protection.

This Mediterranean-style diet lowered colorectal cancer risk by 43 percent.

"It just goes back to what weve been learning over time is that the Mediterranean diet is a really healthy diet that keeps us from developing things such as colon and rectal cancers, heart disease, and other diseases," Williams said.

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Vegetarian diet may lower colorectal cancer risk

If you weren't alive in the 1950s, you may not be familiar with the Davy Crockett coonskin hat, a $100 million fad touched off by a Walt Disney television series. Like millions of other eight-year-old wanna-be frontiersmen, I wore onefor a while. A short while. This fad flamed out quickly.

Soon we had all moved on to other things, like hula hoops. They were a fad of a different sort, a fad that became something more than a fad.

Fads are short-lived; hula hoops remained popular for decades. Even if you weren't alive in 1958, when hula hoops were first twirled, you probably know about them. They almost disappeared but were reborn. Although not exactly the rage today, they're still around.

And then there's another fad of the '50s, rock music. Rock and roll, as it was originally called, didn't flame or fade, like piano wrecking or panty raids, and it didn't merely hang on, like hula hoops. It evolved and changed and grew. It made the leap from passing fad to something big and broad and permanent. Rock in all its many forms, from rockabilly to rap metal, from proto-punk to post-Britpop, keeps rocking along.

Having examined a variety of fad types, you might wonder about organic food, food produced without synthetic fertilizers or pesticides. Where in this taxonomy of fads does it fit?

In the 1960s and 1970s organic food had the makings of a fad that would flame out, never to be heard from again. Many saw it as a hippie affectation that would go away when the hippies grew up and got jobs.

Time proved that notion wrong; a coonskin cap it was not. Nor was it a hula hoop exactly; it never enjoyed a spectacular moment in the spotlight, as hula hoops did, when everyone seems to be "doing it."

Instead, organic food may be making the leap rock and roll once made, to something big and long lasting.

Today's organic devotees aren't hippies; they're mainstream Americans. And they no longer have to patronize specialty stories; every supermarket offers organic produce and organic packaged products. There's little chance that future generations will view organic food the way we view, say, goldfish swallowing, as a quaint quirk of a moment in time long past.

In 2012 sales of organic food reached $28.4 billion (http://tiny.cc/), more than 4% of total food sales, and projected to reach $35 billion last year. By one estimate organic-food sales are growing a heady 14% a year (http://tiny.cc/).

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Organic Food, Coonskin Caps and Hula Hoops

A horizontal full frame image of healthy fruits. | Gregor Schuster via Getty Images

Each year, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) releases a list of the "dirty dozen" that is, twelve fruits and vegetables that they highly recommend people should buy organic, as opposed to conventionally grown.

The list, which is based on the pesticide residues found on 48 popular fruit and vegetables, has similar findings this year to past releases. However, two notable additions for 2015 include hot chili peppers and kale/collard greens, which are highlighted because of the types of pesticides being used on the produce.

"Residue tests conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture have found these foods laced with particularly toxic pesticides. Among the chemicals at issue are organophosphate and carbamate insecticides." These types of pesticides attack the nervous system, according to National Geographic, so even though they're used in small doses in North America, people who eat a lot of these types of foods are advised to seek out organic options.

Although pesticides used in Canada, particularly on food, are highly regulated, there are still potential ill effects from ingesting these chemicals, particularly for people with compromised immune systems, according to Prevention magazine. And there are other reasons to consider buying organic produce as well.

As Director of the Organic Agriculture Centre of Canada Andrew Hammermeister pointed out in an email to The Huffington Post Canada, eating organic food is not just a matter of reducing pesticide intake.

"Organic foods are an excellent option for consumers that want to reduce exposure to synthetic pesticides, genetically engineered organisms, growth hormones, antibiotics, preservatives, food colouring, flavours etc.," he wrote. But it also benefits ecological sustainability, biodiversity and animal welfare, and reduces environmental exposure to nanotechnology and antibiotics.

Meanwhile, a study reported last year by the CBC noted that half of all organic produce in the country was found to contain pesticides. The reasons ranged from pesticide residue in water or soil, contact with non-organic produce, and of course, the possibility that some farmers are using pesticide when they claim they aren't. From the sample, 1.8 per cent of produce exceeded the allowable limits by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA).

So what is a consumer who wants to avoid pesticides to do? First of all, eat from the "clean" fruits and veggies on the list below they have the least amount of pesticides, thanks to their thicker (and more protective) skins. Secondly, for the "dirty" produce, consider buying organic. Even though it is possible they'll contain some pesticides, it will be far less than conventionally grown foods.

Excerpt from:
Foods To Buy Organic In 2015, Especially For Fruits And Vegetables