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this post was submitted on 17 May 2026
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Mildly Interesting
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To clarify, it's specifically squamous-cell carcinoma, not all esophaheal cancers. SCC is, however, the most common form of head/neck cancer by a mile.
As the study notes, though:
If so, that's a highly preventable problem. Vegan/vegetarian diets have higher risks of certain nutritional deficiencies (and lower of others), but it's not especially hard to have a balanced diet.
That is: if you're doing it for health, the "fix" should already be baked-in.
Edit: Forgot to mention for anyone looking for resources about vegetarian/plant-based dieting for health, "whole foods plant-based" (WFPBD) is what you'll want to be looking into. That's where the major health benefits are.
Edit 2: Reading the methodology more thoroughly now, it seems like a plant-based diet was underrepresented in the data and that "no difference in cancer risk in vegans except elevated colorectal cancer" is suspect (which the authors disclaim for colorectal). a) Within the study itself, you'd think the doubled SCC rate wouldn't just stop at vegetarians somehow (a plant-based diet is less acidic than an animal-based one, but still??), and b) it directly contradicts several meta-analyses finding an overall lowered risk of cancer in vegetarians (as this study seems to) and then another marked lowering from that in vegans. Linked above, for example, from 2018:
To add to that: A majority of head and neck cancers are caused by HPV.
The authors note possible additional factors to diet. I wonder whether HPV vaccination may be loosely inversely correlated with vegetarianism (geographical/socio-economic/healthcare system differences etc.).
One thing I would've initially speculated but apparently had wrong was dietary acid, which is actually lower in plant-based diets. The other would be possibly volume of food (lower caloric density), but overall, I'm willing to take the authors' speculation as-is, as I'm sure they tried to find any relevant data when speculating about causality โ much more thoroughly and knowledgeably than I could hope to.
Last time I took some dietary acid, I was laying in bed for the next 16 hours.