Research
Macro partitioning
Vegetarian and vegan diets are associated with a significantly reduced incidence of total cancer compared to omnivorous diets.
Following a vegetarian or vegan diet is linked to a lower risk of developing cancer. The risk reduction is modest but significant.
ModerateSupportsMEDIUM confidence
meta-analytic pooling under a random-effects model showed significant (P = 0.002) lower risk of cancer among vegetarians (RR 0.92, 95% CI 0.87 to 0.98) and vegans (RR 0.85 95% CI 0.75 to 0.95)
Why this rating
Meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies, but only a limited number of studies for specific cancer types.
Source
Vegetarian, vegan diets and multiple health outcomes: A systematic review with meta-analysis of observational studies
Monica Dinu et al. · Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition · 2016
DOI 10.1080/10408398.2016.1138447
Meta-analysis · 96 studiesCited 958×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
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