Eating meat is a cause of cancer, in addition to humans, this happens to be the case for mammals across the animal kingdom. While cancer is thought of and treated as a human disease, cancer can develop in any animals with cells (which is all animals).
Peto’s Paradox is. the observation that the incidence of cancer between species does not appear to correlate with the number of cells in an organism, through age and body size. For instance, humans have a higher incidence of cancer than whales, but if the probability of developing cancer is the same across all cells, then one would assume vice versa.
Curious about Peto’s Paradox, researchers from France and Denmark reviewed zoo data on 191 species and 110,148 individuals to map age-controlled cancer mortality to the mammalian tree of life.
Their results showed that being a carnivore was the largest driving cause of cancer mortality. Incidence of cancer was significantly higher in carnivores compared to animals that are strictly herbivores, such as primates and ungulates (both of which are, in general, naturally herbivores). Ungulates were consistently most resistant to developing cancer. Ungulates are an order of animals that are, for the most part, strictly herbivores ((with the exception of whale) including antelopes, sheeps, goats, giraffes, hippopotamuses, deer, and cattle. In other words, those big strong, muscular animals that graze on vegetables all day.
The most cancer prone species was the kowari, a small carnivorous, marsupial from Australia. In contrast, of about 200 blackbucks and 200 Patagonian maras, two grass eating mammals, there were zero deaths from cancer.
Other findings from the study revealed mammals that frequently consumed mammalian prey developed significantly higher cancer mortality risk compared to mammals that consumed non-mammals or never-consumed mammals.
Published in journal Nature, the results provide further evidence that meat is carcinogenic, even in animals where they had millions of years to evolve protective mechanism. Therefore, meat consumption is even worse for natural herbivores, such as human primates.
So wrong is the carnivore diet. Eating steak and BBQ ribs doesn’t make you more masculine in anyway, it will just helps turn you into cancer’s little bitch.
O Vincze et al. Cancer risk across mammals. Nature 2022. 601; 263-267. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-04224-5
