Examining ‘sketchy’ science headlines, including an apparent link between bowel cancer and a vegan diet

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Have you ever looked at a scientific study in the news and been concerned by what it means for you? ABC science reporter Belinda Smith talks some sketchy headlines that are floating around, including one that linked bowel cancer to the vegan diet.

Transcript

00:00Let me just preface this by saying that the science behind this is not necessarily sketchy,

00:06but some of the interpretations of that science do venture into sketch territory.

00:11So if you believe the headlines, one of them was the trendy diet that researchers suspect

00:16could fuel bowel cancer cases as cases surge in under 50s.

00:21Now that might be true if you're a mouse.

00:24So a lot of the studies are done in rodents.

00:27And look, mice are a great animal to provide insights into biology and physiology, but

00:34a mouse is not a human.

00:37So this study, which came out of Japan, they got some mice which were genetically engineered

00:41to be more predisposed to get a certain type of small intestine cancer.

00:47And when they fed some of these mice a normal diet, and some of these mice a diet that was

00:52rich in proteins that you find in milk, blood, egg whites, they found that the ones on the

00:58supplemented diet tend to have smaller tumours than the ones with the other diet.

01:02Now, you might say, okay, maybe I should be having more milk, more eggs, more blood.

01:08But really, mice are fundamentally different to humans in so many ways.

01:13And you know, in humans, we tend to get more large intestine cancer, and small intestinal

01:20cancer is actually quite rare.

01:22But in mice, it's the other way around.

01:24They get more small intestinal cancer than large intestine cancer.

01:27So you know, good insights into biology, but am I going to change my diet?

01:32Nah.

01:33Okay.

01:34So basically, the message is for all you mice who are watching at the moment, don't go vegan,

01:39please, because you might get bowel cancer.

01:42All the mice here, very specific.

01:44Yeah, exactly.

01:45Small mice in particular.

01:46Belinda, we want to move on to this other one that's warning that red meat now apparently

01:50can increase your risk of diabetes.

01:55It's always like, I read the other day, red meat can also do bad things and can cause

02:00cancer or can cause, I don't know, constipation or something, but now diabetes as well.

02:05Why?

02:06Oh, look, if it's not cancer, it's diabetes, right?

02:08Right.

02:09This is a couple of research papers that came out last month, which kind of add to this

02:13growing body of evidence that red meat might be linked.

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