Eating 50 grams daily of processed meat – such as bacon, sausage, hot dogs and ham – leads to a 18 per cent increase of getting colorectal cancer, according to the World Health Organization’s cancer agency. Twenty-two experts in public health and cancer from 10 countries deliberated over information from 800 research studies on cancer in humans, and compared it to the eating of red meat and processed meats.
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With regard to red meat, the report said it contained a few important nutrients, but still labelled it “probably carcinogenic”, with links to colon, prostate and pancreatic cancers.
Eating red meat is “probably” likely to cause cancer, while processed meat is a definite carcinogen, United Nations health experts announced Monday.
According to an estimate from the Global Burden of Disease Project, a diet high in processed meat causes 34,000 deaths due to cancer per year.
While a few studies have looked at the cancer risks of various types of red and processed meats, there’s not enough data to say which types of meats are safer than others. They argue cancer is not caused by foods, but by several factors.
But isn’t eating processed meat just as bad as smoking?
But Professor Stewart said it was “a distortion” to equate red meat and processed meat with cigarettes. “It will require careful consideration…to determine what action, if any, is needed regarding changes to nutritional plans for public health services”.
In the IARC report, red meat was defined as this, “red meat refers to unprocessed mammalian muscle meat, for example, beef, veal, pork, lamb, mutton, horse, or goat meat, including minced or frozen meat; it is usually consumed cooked”.
This came to light in WHO’s anticipated report on the link between red meat and cancer.
Based on the results, the IARC classified processed meat as “carcinogenic to humans”.
The category includes meat that has been salted, cured, fermented or smoked – hot dogs, sausages, corned beef, dried meat like beef jerky or South African biltong, canned meat or meat-based sauces.
“We’ve known for quite a long time that we need to limit high processed food consumption and to only have a moderate amount of lean meat”, Dr Pollard said.
“Limited evidence from cohort studies shows there is no association between the intake of animal protein products and overall breast cancer risk”.
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However, that is not an indication of how much cancer they cause.
