Preventing bowel cancer

Lifestyle choices and bowel cancer prevention

To reduce your risk of bowel cancer, we recommend you:

Eat a fibre-rich diet

There is strong evidence that eating a diet rich in fibre, including wholegrains, can reduce your risk of bowel cancer.

Good sources of fibre include:

• Fruit and vegetables
• Pulses such as beans, chickpeas and lentils
• Wholegrain and brown varieties of bread, rice, pasta and breakfast cereals
• Unsalted nuts and seeds

Aim to eat 30g of fibre a day. To help you get more fibre, try adding these foods to your meals and snacks more often.

You can find more information on our fibre, wholegrains and cancer page or download our fibre factsheet.

Limit red and processed meat

Eating processed meat, such as ham, bacon and sausages, and too much red meat, including beef, pork and lamb, increases bowel cancer risk.

That’s why we recommend you to:

• Eat little or no processed meat
• Limit red meat to no more than 3 portions per week (350–500g or 12-18oz cooked weight in total)

For more guidance, visit our meat and cancer page or download our processed meat factsheet.

Limit how much alcohol you drink

Drinking alcohol increases the risk of bowel cancer and at least 6 other cancers. For cancer prevention, it is best to avoid alcohol altogether.

Find more guidance on our alcohol and cancer page or download our alcohol factsheet for tips to reduce how much you drink.

Be physically active

There is strong scientific evidence that being physically active in everyday life reduces your risk of bowel cancer by supporting digestion and helping you maintain a healthy weight.

Try doing 20-30 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise a day like brisk walking, or 10-15 minutes of vigorous-intensity exercise a day like running.

Learn more on our exercise and cancer page or download our physical activity factsheet for tips to get active.

Being a healthy weight

Being a healthy weight can reduce your risk of 13 different types of cancer, including bowel cancer. To achieve a healthier weight, aim to eat a healthy, balanced diet and move more throughout your day.

Visit our weight and cancer page or download our Weight Matters guide for information and support to achieve a healthier weight.

Stop smoking

Smoking tobacco increases your risk of developing bowel cancer and several other cancers. Cutting down or quitting can help reduce your risk.

Contact your GP for support and services to help you cut down or stop.

Visit our smoking and cancer page for more information.

Supplements and bowel cancer prevention

Our research shows that taking calcium supplements can help reduce your risk of bowel cancer. However, we do not recommend relying on supplements for cancer prevention. Getting nutrients from a healthy, balanced diet is the best way to support your overall health.

Our research also shows that eating dairy foods can help reduce bowel cancer risk, and dairy is naturally a good source of calcium. For most people, including dairy foods as part of a balanced diet is an easy way to get the calcium you need.

There is also limited evidence that taking vitamin D or multivitamin supplements might help reduce bowel cancer risk. Even so, our advice remains the same: aim to get your nutrients from food first and only use supplements if they are recommended to you by a health professional.

Overall lifestyle and bowel cancer

In April 2025, we published a report looking at how your overall diet and lifestyle choices work together to affect your risk of bowel cancer.

Instead of focusing on individual food types (such as vegetables) or individual lifestyle choices (like how active you are), this report looked at the bigger picture – how all of these aspects of our lives work together to influence your cancer risk.

This research showed strong evidence that certain combinations of everyday choices reduce the risk of bowel cancer. They include:

• Maintaining a healthy weight and regularly doing physical activity
• Eating plenty of fruit and vegetables, as well as other fibre-rich foods like wholegrains and pulses
• Drinking coffee and having calcium containing foods, such as dairy
• Reducing sugary drinks and avoiding alcohol
• Avoiding processed meat
• Not smoking

To get the most benefit, it’s better to follow as many of these as possible every day, rather than just focusing on one or two.

How health professionals can help patients reduce their bowel cancer risk

Health professionals can play an important role in helping people reduce their risk of bowel cancer. By offering clear, evidence-based advice on healthy habits, you can support patients to make positive and informed choices about their health.

We’ve created free resources to help you in your conversations:

• Protect yourself against bowel cancer guide
• Factsheets on fibre, physical activity, weight and more
• Changing behaviours guide – helping you frame conversations with your patients
• Bowel cancer webinar: Red and processed meat
• Bowel cancer infographic