While scrolling through your preferred news outlet in the morning while eating a bowl of oatmeal, you may stumble across several food items or activities that can all of the sudden cause cancer. So what’s the latest? Well, according to New York Post, vegetarianism.
What?, you may be saying to yourself. I thought vegetarianism was the way of the future, the optimal diet for humans? How is this possible? Did I give up steak for nothing? Well, according to the New York Post long-term vegetarianism leads to a genetic mutation that leaves individuals vulnerable to heart and colon conditions, cancer included.
Genes? Now I’m confused. Let’s dive a little deeper into the literature. The study in question was looking specifically at a gene variant that causes the body to increase the amount of arachidonic acid that it can make from smaller omega-6 molecules found in plants. So, this mutation creates more omega-6 fatty acid from smaller molecules. What we know about omega-6 fatty acid is that it is pro-inflammatory and that having a large ratio of omega-6s to omega-3s in the body could play a role in lifestyle related diseases like colon cancer, heart disease, and other inflammatory-related diseases (however, even the research for that is unclear).
As the researchers were studying this predominantly vegetarian Indian city, they identified the genetic mutation, or vegetarian gene variant, in 68% of the residents. Therefore, they hypothesized (hypothesized being the key word here) that perhaps these individuals were also at a higher risk for inflammatory-related diseases. However, the New York Post skipped over all of this and made the connection without any research backing this information. The study did not even look at any data linking genes to the disease risk.
This study is one of the first looking at vegetarianism gene mutations, and any potential implications that it has need to be further studied. Research needs to done on possible disease risk outcomes in people with this genetic mutation. Perhaps prospective cohort studies or observational studies can be conducted on prominently vegetarian communities with this mutation to see their mortality risk for omega-6 related inflammatory diseases.
Until then, health practitioners should take these popular media articles with several grains of salt. Reading articles like the New York Post can really discourage someone on the fence of changing diets to not adopt this new behavior, based on one [incorrectly summarized] research study, when several studies have documented the benefits of vegetarianism, especially for lowering disease risk. Health practitioners need to be really well-informed on the current research to educate individuals to may be reading that vegetarianism causes cancer over their morning oatmeal.
- Kothapalli, Kumar SD, et al. “Positive selection on a regulatory insertion-deletion polymorphism in FADS2 influences apparent endogenous synthesis of arachidonic acid.” Molecular biology and evolution (2016): msw049.
- Li, David. “Being a vegetarian could kill you, science warns.” The New York Post. March 30, 2016.