Unfortunately there is no rating system within the World Health Organization system, the agency has created a hodgepodge of probable and possible carcinogens that borders on silly – pickled vegetables, coffee, cellphones, frying, working as a barber (think hair dye) and now red meat.
Advertisement
While the one-off hot dog or bacon fry-up will have little effect on our individual risk of developing cancer, given the evidence, one would be unwise to consume these products on a daily basis, especially since the risk has been shown to be dose-related. The report indicated that if you’re eating that much processed meat a day, it’s going to have implications, because of the chemicals that are in those foods.
“After my freshman year in high school I became a vegetarian”, said sophomore Makayla Jordan-Diemler. Not too stimulating to the appetite and probably overstated.
A recent poll of more than 2,200 Boston Globe readers found that 48 percent said they intend to cut back on red and processed meats in reaction to the latest report.
The IARC, considered a high authority in evaluating evidence on cancer causation has stated that there is evidence to support a link between eating too much meat and the beginning of colorectal cancer, the third-most common type of cancer on a global scale.
But this isn’t really news in the scientific field; evidence of a link between cancer and the consumption of meat products has been building up for years, study after study.
Group 1: carcinogenic to humans. But there are lots of things that are also in that same category of cancer-causing agents, including alcohol, birth control pills, smog and (gasp) sunlight. There is only one substance in this group: Caprolactam, a component of nylon. So in a rare bit of good news, stockings are okay and in my medical opinion probably should be worn more. First, it is important to understand that the IARC does hazard identification, not risk assessment. Is all meat likely to cause cancer? Group 1 carcinogens are grouped together because they are known to be cancer-causing, however their ability to cause cancer varies. Two substances could be classified in the same category if one quadrupled the risk of cancer and the other increased it by a tiny amount.
Such classifications are supposed to inform consumers and their health care providers, but they do more to confuse and mislead.
Information provided by IARC claims eating only 3.5 ounces of red meat per day, a size equal to a small burger, increases the risk of colorectal cancer by 17 percent; a portion size well below where the minimum allowance for an adult should be. You can eat a diet that is also high in fiber and antioxidant-rich foods, you can exercise regularly, and you can get screened by colonoscopy starting at age 50 (or even earlier if you have familial history of the disease). More importantly, it is a relative increase in risk, not an absolute increase in risk.
World Health Organization released the report after consulting with the worldwide Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).
Now take the case of smoking.
Having revealed the dangers of consuming processed and red meat, therefore, people must be cautious on its consumption and pay attention to the way it was prepared. So headlines such as “Bacon, burgers and sausages are as big a cancer threat as cigarettes, global health chiefs are to rule.”-Daily Mail, 22 October 2015, are wildly misleading”. But they do sell papers.
IRAC drew its overdue conclusion from 800 epidemiological studies (across several continents and ethnic groups) that investigated the association between cancer and the consumption of both processed and red meat. The health of the planet would improve as well since one of the major contributors to greenhouse gasses is the methane produced by beef cattle farming.
Advertisement
“We are just at the tip of the iceberg in this research”, Ulrike Peters of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and senior author of the study said in an interview. Now that is a few good news.
