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Long-term red meat consumption causes a modest but significant risk of getting colon cancer. Important points: long-term, red meat, modest. To notice this effect you have to consume high amounts for long time. The effect is noticeable for red meat (beef, pork) only, not chicken, not fish. The increase is modest, but it is there. Does a small amount of red meat, once in a while, cause a smaller increase in colon cancer? We don't know. This is a growing field and we are starting to get enough data to give recommendations about how to prevent cancer through diet, guidelines can be found on several government websites. Reducing the consumption of red meat helps for sure.

Very interesting question. You have a good point: cancer can be cured with very high probability if caught at an early stage (small size, not spread). However, cancer very often is diagnosed at late stages, because it doesn't give specific symptoms (if at all) during the early stage. So, unfortunately, very often there is no specific sign to look for and get suspicious. But there are two things you can do: prevention and screening. Quitting smoking, healthy diet, doing sports not only are effective cancer prevention strategies, but can prevent other diseases as well. Cancer screenings like mammography, colonoscopy, PAP test are doing a great job in detecting those frequent cancers, before it is too late. You can talk to your doctor during a general checkup, asking about what screenings are available, if your diet is balanced and so on.

Animals in the wild have apparently low cancer rates only because they are less likely to survive to old age and our statistics is mostly based on occasional reports. However, it is true that elephant and big animals are composed by a huge amount of cells and we would expect an increasing chance to develop cancer with animal size. This is known as Peto's paradox. There is a very new study about it which basically tells mechanisms are in place to suppress cancer growth in these big animals. Elephants, for example, have multiple copies of a gene called p53. P53 is nicknamed "the guardian of the genome", it is probably the signle most important gene put in place between us and cancer. Having more copies of it decreases the chances of disrupting its function completely.

A good balanced diet will maintain your body healthy. It is like having a car and taking good care of it. If you take good care of your car, you will less likely break it, you won't need to do major fixes and it'll last long. This doesn't mean that you won't have accidents or that it cannot break. It also doesn't mean that once it IS broken, you can fix it by normal maintenance. A good balanced diet will help in keeping your body healthy and in good shape. Diet won't ensure to avoid cancer. And if you get cancer than you need to go to the doctor and get special treatment, because general maintenance is not enough.

Vegetables contain lots of antioxidants. Antioxidants protect cells from damage of free radicals and there is plenty of evidence that they counteract the action of carcinogenic agents in experimental conditions. However, scientists are not sure that increasing antioxidant intake in diet can prevent cancer development. In some studies, giving vitamin (some vitamins are antioxidant) supplements actually increased cancer risk instead of decreasing it. So it seems that to give a protective effect, antioxidant should be taken from vegetables or, in alternative, that the protective effect comes from a different molecule. Burnt food can increase cancer risk. However, this is true mainly for burnt red meat. Vegetables do not seem to cause a significant increase. Deep frying, if not done properly, can produce acrylammide, which is classified as carcinogenic. Microwaves actually work more like boiling food, rather than frying/burning. I am not aware of any scientific evidence of deleterious effects of microwaves on food. I think you will find very interesting this video which covers both antioxidants and burnt food in their relationship to cancer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlJQdRFfucQ