Over the years, numerous research efforts have been done in an effort to establish the link between diets that are rich in meat products and the development of bowel cancer. Researchers are determined to resolve what it is in meat that causes cancer to develop in the bowel, or possibly disprove this theory and find out if it has more to do with what food products people might not be eating that could protect them from the development of the disease.
A recent Australian research has looked into this and studied what actually happens when a person eats a large serving of meat in combination with fiber rich food such as lentils, whole grains, and beans. What they found is that eating meat does, in fact, trigger cancer-promoting molecules to increase within the bowel, however, the resistant starch in the fiber rich food help to neutralize this effect.
"This finding supports the consumption of resistant starch as a way of reducing the risks associated with a high red meat diet," says research associate Dr. Karen Humphreys from the Flinders Center for Innovation in Cancer at the Flinders University in Adelaide. She adds that when the person is on a diet rich in red meat, the levels of a cancer-promoting molecule called miR-17-92 increases within the otherwise healthy cells within the intestinal wall. Dr. Humphreys and her team believe that, "uncontrolled cell growth can eventually lead to cancer development. Patients with colorectal cancer often have very high levels of these molecules into cancerous tissue."
Prior to this research, there has already been evidence that evening resistant starch is beneficial to a person because it nourishes the good bacteria that are living in a person's gut. The bacteria will ferment the fiber and turn it into butyrate, which is a substance that helps maintain the health of the intestinal walls.