Drinking a large glass of milk a day could reduce the risk of bowel cancer by nearly a fifth, according to a new study funded by Cancer Research UK.
The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, is the largest of its kind and examined the effects of 97 dietary factors on bowel cancer risk on more than 542,000 women over 16 years.
Researchers from the University of Oxford discovered that, on average, increasing daily calcium intake by 300mg – roughly equivalent to a large 240ml glass of cow’s milk or a couple of pots of yogurt – resulted in a 17% reduction in bowel cancer risk.
“There is good evidence from previous studies that dairy products lower the risk of bowel cancer, but it wasn’t yet clear if this was driven by calcium,” says Megan Winter, health information manager at Cancer Research…