Generally, dietary advice is to limit red-meat intake to once or twice a week, said nutrition professor Tom Sanders of King’s College London – the equivalent of about two steaks or three hamburgers.
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But the panel’s decision was not unanimous, and by raising lethal concerns about a food that anchors countless meals, it will be controversial.
“For an individual, the risk of developing colorectal cancer due to their consumption of processed meat remains small, but this risk increases with the amount of meat consumed”, Dr. Kurt Straif of the IARC said in a statement.
Processed meats, like bacon, sausage, hot dogs, and burgers from fast food chains, came with a stronger warning: “carcinogenic”, meaning eating processed meats has the potential to cause cancer.
“I’m not buying it, and I don’t think the public will either”, Hall said, adding that “to put red meat in the same sentence as tobacco and asbestos is absurd”.
It said red meats were “probably carcinogenic” but there was limited evidence. It said red meat contains a few important nutrients, but still labeled it “probably carcinogenic”, with links to colon, prostate and pancreatic cancers.
NAMI vice president Betsy Booren pointed to the high consumption of processed meats as part of the Mediterranean diet, yet “people in countries where the Mediterranean diet is followed, like Spain, Italy and France, have a few of the longest lifespans in the world and excellent health”. He said consumers can view those findings by clicking here.
In spite of the report by the World Health Organization, a few meat lovers were still able to keep their chins up.
Betsy Booren, Ph.D., NAMI vice president of scientific affairs, said that the IACR “tortured the data to ensure a specific outcome”. The studies looked at more than a dozen types of cancer in populations with diverse diets over the past 20 years.
Meat eaters at a New York food court mostly shrugged off the report Monday.
Other scientists, however, have criticised the epidemiological studies for too often reaching “false positives”, that is, concluding that something causes cancer when it doesn’t.
So this morning we’re asking if the study will cause you to lower your consumption of processed meat, or even cut it our entirely? “But the effects of eating meat may be minimal, if anything”.
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And they could hurt the American meat industry, which is arguing vigorously against linking their products with cancer, contending that the disease also involves lifestyle and environmental factors.
