This seems pretty misleading. The WHO put these meats in the same class in terms of <i>certainty of being</i> a carcinogen in humans, but I don't see any claim about the <i>rates of cancer caused</i> by each being comparable. That is, they're convinced that it causes some nonzero amount of cancer, but how many cancers it causes is a separate issue.<p>Also, the picture at the top shows a cheeseburger, but ground beef is never actually mentioned in the article as an example of "processed meats". It represents an older consensus (seemingly unrelated to the current topic apart from the shared theme of "meat bad") that excessive red meat intake contributes to health problems.
It's important to understand what "increased risk" means.<p>From the linked article:<p>> The IARC’s experts concluded that each 50-gram (1.8-ounce) portion of processed meat eaten daily increased the risk of colorectal cancer by 18%.<p>From a related article:<p>> To put this in perspective, the lifetime risk of colon cancer is 5 percent. If you have a hot dog every day, your risk goes to 6 percent.<p><a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cancer-sausage-red-meat-world-health-organization/" rel="nofollow">http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cancer-sausage-red-meat-world-he...</a>
"No, processed meat has been classified in the same category as causes of cancer such as tobacco smoking and asbestos... but this does NOT mean that they are all equally dangerous. The IARC classifications describe the strength of the scientific evidence about an agent being a cause of cancer, rather than assessing the level of risk."<p><a href="http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/iarcnews/pdf/Monographs-Q&A_Vol114.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/iarcnews/pdf/Monographs-Q...</a> <- link seems to be down at the moment
"<i>and if you are a hairdresser or do shift work (both class 2A), you should seek a new career.</i>"<p>This line at the end of the article irked me. A friend of mine who was a hair stylist for 20 years is dying of brain cancer and her doctor's are pretty sure her exposure to chemicals on a daily basis had a role in her cancer.<p>While I understand the comment's attempt at humor, the risk these people have with their exposure to harmful chemicals is very real.
<p><pre><code> a member of the Meat Advisory Panel... said "“The top priorities
for cancer prevention remain smoking cessation, maintenance of
normal body weight and avoidance of high alcohol intakes.”"
emeritus fellow at the Institute of Food Research, also said the
effect was small.
The North American Meat Institute said defining red meat as a cancer
hazard defied common sense.
</code></pre>
Due to economies of McDonald's, Burger King et al, there appears to be an intense lobbying group<p>which would go against any attempt to bring forth discussion on this topic.<p>I won't be surprised if a decade or two from now we see the issue in the same light as Lead<p>poisoning primarily due to someone's[1] fight against the status quo.<p>On a related topic, there is an interesting documentary Cowspiracy [0] (available on Netflix)<p>which talks about the carbon footprint caused by the animal husbandry. Although it's feature<p>length, I think the first two acts are compelling.<p>[0] <a href="http://www.cowspiracy.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.cowspiracy.com/</a><p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clair_Cameron_Patterson" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clair_Cameron_Patterson</a><p>Edit: Flow.
Basically: Don't eat anything because it will give you cancer. I've been living by that rule for about 15 minutes now, but I'm starting to get hungry.
Anyone have a good source for articles that eschew the political commentary in favor of just presenting the study findings in a concise summary?<p>Does anyone actually care that the global lobbyists for meat don't agree that meat is a carcinogen (or that any lobbyists against meat would care that it is)?
The article mentions bacon but doesn't differentiate between cured and uncured varieties. I was under the impression that uncured bacon avoided some of these issues mentioned in the article.<p>Edit: Assuming you don't have any issues with animal fats and regular salt (I don't).
It is extremely odd that this article has a burger at the top of it. As far as I know burger patties aren't normally processed, someone correct me if I am wrong?<p>A lot of people find it surprising that aside from the veggies the patty is the next healthiest part of a burger. It is the bun and sauce which will kill you (both have a lot of sugar/complex carbs), and then maybe the cheese in third worst.<p>Just for an example, a Big Mac has three layers of bun (2x patties), while a McDouble has only two layers of bun (2x patties also). The McDouble has 7g of sugar, while the Big mac has 9g of sugar. Now, yes, the sauce will account for some of the delta here, but my point is those buns are extremely unhealthy.<p>As a strange result, it is often healthier to get smaller but stacked patties rather than a single patty that is larger since the buns, sauce, and cheese will be smaller also. That's why if you look at the Quarter Pounder (1x patty) at McDonald's it is much more unhealthy than the McDouble (more so than you'd expect), the McDouble (2x patties) is 7g of sugar, the single layer Quarter Pounder is 10g(!) of sugar.
The same site in the "Related Content" section show articles saying processed meats are bad in 2009, 2010, 2011 as well.<p>Then another related article says increase of eating fruits and vegetables does not significantly help reduce risk of cancer either.<p>No meat. No fruits. No vegetables. Good thing the air we breath and water we drink is clean and doesn't cause ... hmm, nevermind. We're all screwed.
And wood smoke is more carcinogenic than tobacco smoke.<p>So what? I don't want to live in a world without bacon, sausages, roast beef, pipes and cigars!<p>The fundamental fallacy is the idea that tobacco is so dangerous that it, and anything comparably dangerous, must be banned. Tobacco's dangerous. Cigarettes are a really bad idea. Eating meat for breakfast, lunch and dinner is a pretty bad idea. Don't do that so much.<p>But you, I and everyone else on earth <i>will</i> die sometime, of something: whether it's cancer, congestive heart failure or something else entirely, we <i>all</i> die. The question is, will we live before we die?
I guess this is important since we might start seeing class action law suits citing processed meats as a cause of cancer? The question is can you tell that the type of cancer was causing by the consumption of processed meat? When tobacco or asbestos is the cause, it seems to be fairly easy to tell what was the cause of cancer. Will we see warning labels pop up on our meat products?
This confirms the findings described in the book "The China Study". It describes a massive long term survey done in china. Animal proteins is harming.
In other news: reading books causes rectal cancer too. All tested groups that got cancer were reading books at least 1 cubic centimeter in volume per week