/me kicks CF for being stupid and eating her post.
got any links for that Cassie?
I don't have any links but I might be able to shed a little light on the colon cancer/meat link. It has to do with digestive physiology and particularly, the length of the digestive tract. If you analyze the digestive tracts of carnivores you'll find that they tend to have bodies about 1/4th to 1/5th the length of the digestive tract. This moves the food they eat through the digestive system and out of the body fairly rapidly and this is necessary to maintain health when one eats foods which begin to decay rapidly.
If you go to your kitchen, open your cabinets, freezer and refrigerator, a quick look around will tell you that the things which most require refrigeration are those foods which come from animal sources. These are the foods which decay most quickly. Consuming these foods doesn't stop their decay. If they remain in the body for long, they'll begin to rot inside your digestive tract.
The human digestive tract is about 12-times the length of the torso. Not only is it rather long (even for a monogastric herbivore), but it's rather contorted and puckered inside which slows the progress of matter moving through. We can improve the rate of movement somewhat by assuring that we get enough fiber in our diet which the body uses as a sort of broom to sweep the matter along when it reaches the colon.
Another problem humans encounter is that we have relatively weak stomach acid (mostly HCL), in our stomachs. It's only about 1/20th the strength of that found in a carnivore's stomach. And the stronger acids in a carnivore are the reason they can leave a carcass sitting in the sun for days and continue to return to feed from it. If a human left a steak on the counter for even a few hours, then returned and ate a single bite, they'd likely end up in the hospital if not the morgue because our digestive acids aren't strong enough to kill E. Coli 0157:H7, Botulinum, Salmonella or many other potentially fatal microbes.
So when humans eat animal products, any microbes still alive in that food may well kill us while it wouldn't adversely affect a carnivore at all. Then we need fiber to move the material quickly through our very long digestive system and meat, eggs, chicken, fish and dairy contain zero fiber. So the material turns into a malleable waxy,. plastic-like substance and tends to move very slowly. And since it's in a warm moist place for many hours, it has more than sufficient time to begin to decay. As it decays, a number of unhealthy byproducts are released into the body and most of this occurs in the colon. It would be unreasonable to expect sensitive body tissues to be subjected to the toxic chemicals resulting from the rotting of meat and not suffer from the experience. As this continues day after day for the average person consuming an omnivorous diet, the risk of cancer developing in those tissues begins to rise sharply.
In research mapping colon cancer against fat consumption (since fat consumption is highly connected to consumption of animal products), it has been found and repeatedly confirmed that where consumption of animal products is high, incidents of colon cancer are also high. Where consumption of animal products are low, rates of colon cancer are correspondingly low.
So it really comes down to just a few factors. If the food you're considering begins to decay quickly at body (or room) temperature, contains little or no fiber, and must be cooked before it can be considered safe for human consumption, you're looking at a food which increases the risk of colon cancer.
