Protein and Cancer

For a while now I've realised that I need to lose weight. Knowing I need to do it and doing it are, however, two separate things. My problem is that I just enjoy food too much, hence starting this blog. Now that I'm between jobs though I've got the time to devote to trying to do something about my weight problem. The latest prod to get me dieting came from this post from Jacqueline's blog. This, in turn, lead me to Michael Moseley's recent 'Horizon' programme. One thing he mentioned struck me as very interesting and that was that a low protein diet can help reduce the incidence of various cancers and other diseases. Naturally, as a good carnivore Michael ignored this titbit but as a committed vegetarian I decided to follow it up, which lead me to this abstract which indicates that reduced protein intake is indeed the way to go. As most vegetarians know, a vegetarian diet is naturally lower in protein than a carnivorous/omnivorous one so getting my protein intake down to the requisite level shouldn't be a problem. According to what I was taught in my nutrition course the relevant proportions are: 55% carbohydrates; 15% protein and 30% fats. All I need to do now is find out the protein, carbohydrate, fat and energy content of everything I eat. It's going to be a bit of a pain working all that out for everything I eat but hopefully it will rapidly become second nature.