World Health Organization says processed meats cause cancer

[PGtime]

My grandfather lived to be 96. Every morning of his world started with a shot of whiskey and a breakfast of 2 strips bacon, 1 pancake and 1 egg. Seemed to work out ok for him.

And my grandmother lived to 100 and died in her sleep.

When she was 95, my mom took her to see a doctor for a check up. His first question was: "Can you tell me be about your diet?" She started with: "I eat 3 eggs every day with an English muffin or toast." He said: "You need to not eat so many eggs, they are bad for you." She responded: "Why? Is my cholesterol high?". He answered: "No." Her response: "Then what do you know! I have eaten like that most of my life." He said" You've got a point...".

I do believe and agree to approach a diet with the idea of eating some foods in moderation. In the case of my grandmother, her body could handle the eggs no problem...

 

[SMHarman]

And cholesterol from eggs is now flagged as healthy.
I'm convinced senility / dementia / Alzheimer's and other brain will be a big risk in the statin generations senior years.

 

[SMHarman]

My 91 year old aunt drinks lots of wine and eats lots of chocolate evry single day.

Dark chocolate or Hershey sugary chocolate?

 

[SMHarman]

Can this organization come up with a cure for cancer? They know the causes of cancer, when are they going to come up with a cure? Talk is cheap.

A plant forward diet with less meat) not vegetarian or vegan. And limited processed sugar will reduce your cancer risk.

Once you have it, it is hard to cure as it is in the reproductive processes of the body.

 

[SMHarman]

You can still eat bacon but it will cost you more! We have been buying bacon with no nitrates for over a year now. Here in Canada it's produced & packaged by J M Schneider or Presidents Choice (Free & Natural). They also have hotdogs and lunch meats with no nitrates or chemicals.

We very rarely use deli meat (full of sodium nitrates & who knows what else). I cook roast beef, roast pork, chickens or turkeys and slice the meat (I have an electric slicer), then I package it up into small packages & freeze it. It is also a lot cheaper that way, especially when our boys were in their teens & each taking 2 or 3 sandwiches daily for school lunches! Our boys' sandwiches were envied by their school mates as their sliced meats were thicker than the deli slices.

~Diane

No added nitrates. Or cured using natural nitrate such as celery salt.

 

[CO skier]

No added nitrates. Or cured using natural nitrate such as celery salt.

"Natural", "nitrate"

Interesting juxtaposition.

 

[SMHarman]

"Natural", "nitrate"

Interesting juxtaposition.

Oh yes it is. Grow that celery organically and now you can have organic nitrates (and not in the organic chemistry way)

 

[CO skier]

Oh yes it is. Grow that celery organically and now you can have organic nitrates (and not in the organic chemistry way)

It reminds me of the old joke about a Thermos flask, "It keeps hot things, hot, and cold things, cold. How does it know?"

Nitrates and nitrites from bacon or meat cured with celery powder. How does the body know which are the organic ones?

And what about the nitrates and nitrites our bodies produce? Are they organic or natural if we do not eat organic or natural foods?

 

["Roger"]

Since everyone is jumping on the WHO, I'll offer a very modest defense of them. Start with this.

I saw another report that said there is a 5% chance of getting colon or stomach cancer no matter what you eat. If one eats a hot dog every day that percentage goes up to 6%.

Put differently, this means that if you consume a fair amount of nitrates, you are 20% more likely to contract colon cancer. Now the question is, should the WHO alert people to this, or just keep quiet? I think they should tell people.

The fact that someone's grandmother lived to 110 and ate 10 slice of bacon every day (an exaggeration) is akin to noting that somewhere, someone's uncle smoked every day and lived to a 100. The fact is, even when a number of people who smoke luck out, smoking is still a bad risk. Smoking increases your chances of having a heart attack in a given year by double; lung cancer by seven times. The former is the bigger concern in that a lot more people die of heart attacks regardless of whether they smoke or not. So smoking causes more "excess deaths" (official term) via heart attacks than lung cancer.

Admittedly (pulling back some) what the WHO offered is information. That needs to be evaluated. I had a doctor who use to rant about how he had patients fret about slightly elevated cholesterol while they smoked two packs of ciggie poos a day. In this context, the doctor could care less about the cholesterol. He wanted these patients to stop smoking.

The risk described by the WHO is real, but if you enjoy bacon that much, probably moderation is not all that bad compared to other risks.

 

[TUGBrian]

this was posted to a fb page the other day, it amused me

 

[cotraveller]

The link will probably only go to the relevant clip today, but anyway - -

http://www.gocomics.com/pluggers

 

[Karen G]

this was posted to a fb page the other day, it amused me

That was good, Brian!

 

[WinniWoman]

Dark chocolate or Hershey sugary chocolate?

LOL! Any chocolate, though she is partial to Dove or Godiva milk chocolate!

 

[VegasBella]

My 91 year old aunt drinks lots of wine and eats lots of chocolate evry single day.

My grandfather lived to be 96. Every morning of his world started with a shot of whiskey and a breakfast of 2 strips bacon, 1 pancake and 1 egg. Seemed to work out ok for him.

You two do understand that there are plenty of people who smoke and live into their 90s too, right? These things aren't "all or nothing." Just like a seat-belt won't always save your life in a car crash, neither will a healthy diet and lifestyle necessarily protect you from cancer. And vice versa, plenty of people survive risky activities. But eating a healthy diet (consisting of mostly plants, not dead animals) reduces your risk of early death from cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and other diet-related illness.

I saw this also on CBS. I think the WHO releasing this 'study', is more about hype, and the creative use of statistics than a real, substantial, risk.

Um, it wasn't just one study. This is a compilation of data from multiple studies conducted over the course of several years. Here's what they said from their press release:

"After thoroughly reviewing the accumulated scientific literature, a Working Group of 22 experts from 10 countries convened by the IARC Monographs Programme classified the consumption of red meat as probably carcinogenic to humans (Group 2A), based on limited evidence that the consumption of red meat causes cancer in humans and strong mechanistic evidence supporting a carcinogenic effect."

"The experts concluded that each 50 gram portion of processed meat eaten daily increases the risk of colorectal cancer by 18%."

http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/pr/2015/pdfs/pr240_E.pdf

 

[Karen G]

"The experts concluded that each 50 gram portion of processed meat eaten daily increases the risk of colorectal cancer by 18%."

It would be more helpful if they also would have told what the risk was to begin with. Throwing out the 18% increase is misleading if they don't say 18% of what. In the example I posted above the risk of cancer was 5% no matter what one eats. The risk rose to 6% if one ate the hot dogs every day. Going from 5% to 6% represents a 20 % increase on the 5%. But 20% sounds so much worse than 6% so that's the number they used.

 

[Elan]

You two do understand that there are plenty of people who smoke and live into their 90s too, right? These things aren't "all or nothing." Just like a seat-belt won't always save your life in a car crash, neither will a healthy diet and lifestyle necessarily protect you from cancer. And vice versa, plenty of people survive risky activities. But eating a healthy diet (consisting of mostly plants, not dead animals) reduces your risk of early death from cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and other diet-related illness.

Yep, and hopefully you understand that the point of anecdotal evidence is to show not that a correlation coefficient is zero, but that it's definitely less than 1?

 

[moonstone]

No added nitrates. Or cured using natural nitrate such as celery salt.

Looks like celery. Here is the link to the Schneiders product page. http://www.schneiders.ca/products/by-brand/country-naturals/
The ingredients listed on the bacon:
Pork, water, sea salt, cane sugar, cultured celery extract, spice, smoke

They don't expand on the "spice" or how they get "smoke" but it sure tastes the same as regular bacon.

~Diane

 

[Ty1on]

I don't particularly want to do without life's pleasures just to die healthy.

 

[SMHarman]

Looks like celery. Here is the link to the Schneiders product page. http://www.schneiders.ca/products/by-brand/country-naturals/
The ingredients listed on the bacon:
Pork, water, sea salt, cane sugar, cultured celery extract, spice, smoke

They don't expand on the "spice" or how they get "smoke" but it sure tastes the same as regular bacon.

~Diane

It will. That's just a natural / organic way of getting nitrates to cure.

 

[x3 skier]

It would be more helpful if they also would have told what the risk was to begin with. Throwing out the 18% increase is misleading if they don't say 18% of what. In the example I posted above the risk of cancer was 5% no matter what one eats. The risk rose to 6% if one ate the hot dogs every day. Going from 5% to 6% represents a 20 % increase on the 5%. But 20% sounds so much worse than 6% so that's the number they used.

Exactly right! If I never ate anything during my lifetime WHO had called attention to, I would have a 5% risk. If I stuffed myself with these "dangerous" items everyday for my entire life and enjoyed them, I would have a 6% risk. It's worth it to me to enjoy things in moderation that have some potential risk likie crossing the street while on my bicycle with some risk on being run over by a bus.

Absolutes are the key to any analysis. If the risk was 50% and eating these "dangerous" things increased 20% to 60%, it's a different calculus.

Cheers

 

[WinniWoman]

You two do understand that there are plenty of people who smoke and live into their 90s too, right? These things aren't "all or nothing." Just like a seat-belt won't always save your life in a car crash, neither will a healthy diet and lifestyle necessarily protect you from cancer. And vice versa, plenty of people survive risky activities. But eating a healthy diet (consisting of mostly plants, not dead animals) reduces your risk of early death from cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and other diet-related illness.


Um, it wasn't just one study. This is a compilation of data from multiple studies conducted over the course of several years. Here's what they said from their press release:

"After thoroughly reviewing the accumulated scientific literature, a Working Group of 22 experts from 10 countries convened by the IARC Monographs Programme classified the consumption of red meat as probably carcinogenic to humans (Group 2A), based on limited evidence that the consumption of red meat causes cancer in humans and strong mechanistic evidence supporting a carcinogenic effect."

"The experts concluded that each 50 gram portion of processed meat eaten daily increases the risk of colorectal cancer by 18%."

http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/pr/2015/pdfs/pr240_E.pdf

Of course! I believe in taking responsibility for your health and well-being. I am an "almost" vegetarian myself, eating only occasionally turkey meat. I do eat fish and I do eat dairy products. My lunch 5 days per week is salad greens- mostly organic. I do my best but I am not fanatical about it. I do sometimes eat the processed soy products like the veggie hot dogs if I find I am getting bored- with lots of mustard and sauerkraut! LOL! I like my wine (every weekend) and chocolate. I like ice cream. I like potato chips. So, I occasionally will eat those foods as well. I exercise 5 days per week an hour each session. (Still overweight, though) Plus- I clean my own house and do my other house projects on the weekends- no slouch. But- I know very well that at some point something will "get" me. We all only have so much control over things. (There is another ENTITY in the universe "who" has plans for us.)

 

[WinniWoman]

I don't particularly want to do without life's pleasures just to die healthy.

Exactly! Eat well, exercise, die anyway. It could be a shock to die of nothing!

 

[SMHarman]

We all only have so much control over things. (There is another ENTITY in the universe "who" has plans for us.)

A big asteroid that will wipe us out with no Bruce Willis or space shuttle to save us.

 

[VegasBella]

Well, since everyone in this thread so far is more concerned with coming up with excuses to eat bacon or examples of old people who eat bacon or talking about logic and stats (without actually applying them) instead of doing the very simple task of using google to find out exactly what the WHO said, I will do it for you.

They have said that

colorectal cancer causes 694 000 deaths in 2012

and

"Around one third of cancer deaths are due to the 5 leading behavioural and dietary risks: high body mass index, low fruit and vegetable intake, lack of physical activity, tobacco use, alcohol use."

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs297/en/

and they have said

"The strongest, but still limited, evidence for an association with eating red meat is for colorectal cancer. There is also evidence of links with pancreatic cancer and prostate cancer."

and

"According to the most recent estimates by the Global Burden of Disease Project, an independent academic research organization, about 34 000 cancer deaths per year worldwide are attributable to diets high in processed meat.
Eating red meat has not yet been established as a cause of cancer. However, if the reported associations were proven to be causal, the Global Burden of Disease Project has estimated that diets high in red meat could be responsible for 50 000 cancer deaths per year worldwide."

http://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/

They also say that colon and rectum cancers are the 7th leading cause of death for high income countries.

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs310/en/index1.html

 

[John Cummings]

I don't eat very much processed meats as there are other things that I like better though a good Black Forest Ham sandwich is pretty darn good. However I love my steak and prime rib. To me there is nothing better than a good quality bone-in Rib Eye steak. I am not about to exist on nothing but vegetables because that is just existing and not enjoying life. As far as bacon goes, I don't eat much of it as I far prefer a good ham steak for breakfast.