"Evidence of how unsuitable meat is for human digestion is the relationship established by numerous studies between colon cancer and meat-eating. Meat-centered diets are almost always high in fat and low in fibre, resulting in a slow transit time through the colon and allowing toxic wastes to do their damage.

Peter R. Cheeke, professor of Animal Science at Oregon State University, writes,

"Rates of colorectal cancer in various countries are strongly correlated with per capita consumption of red meat and animal fat, and inversely associated with fibre consumption. Even the most dedicated Animal Scientist or meat supporter must be somewhat dismayed by the preponderance of evidence suggesting a role of meat consumption in the etiology of colon cancer."

Moreover, while being digested, meat is known to generate steroid metabolites possessing carcinogenic (cancer-producing) properties. True carnivores move raw meat through their digestive tracts quickly within about three hours. Humans, with their long digestive tracts, take between twelve and eighteen hours to process and digest flesh.

Because the environment of the digestive tract is warm and moist, the meat rots and creates free radicals, unstable, destructive oxygen atoms that can cause cancer, premature aging, and other degenerative conditions. These free radicals are released into the body during the long digestion process.

As research continues, evidence linking meat-eating to other forms of cancer is building up at an alarming rate.

William Castelli, M.D., director of the Framingham Health Study and the US National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, writes,

"A low-fat plant-based diet would not only lower the heart attack rate about eighty-five percent, but would lower the cancer rate sixty percent."

surgery:

Some of the most shocking results in cancer research have come from exploration of the effects of nitrosamines. Nitrosamines are formed when secondary amines, prevalent in beer, wine, tea, and tobacco, for example, react with chemical preservatives in meat.

The US Food and Drug Administration has labeled nitrosamines – one of the most formidable and versatile groups of carcinogens yet discovered, and their role in the etiology of human cancer has caused growing apprehension among experts.

Dr. William Lijinsky of Oak Ridge National Laboratory conducted experiments in which nitrosamines were fed to test animals. Within six months he found malignant tumors in one hundred percent of the animals. The cancers, he said, "are all over the place; in the brain, lungs, pancreas, stomach, liver, adrenals, and intestines. The animals are a bloody mess."

There are few current studies of the effects of nitrosamines on the human organism; that they are carcinogenic has long been proven. People who eat meat of any description are at risk."

from 'The Higher Taste - A Guide to Gourmet Vegetarian Cooking and a Karma-Free Diet', 2006 edition, chapter one, 'Health and a Meatless Diet".