Bacon, Hot Dogs and Cancer Risk

[Andrew Joiner]

You probably heard the news. Most reports said the WHO (World Health Organization) found processed meats increase your cancer risk by 18%. If you study it you find other numbers. The average risk for Americans of getting colorectal cancer is 5% on the average diet. Eat more than a hot dog a day and your risk is now 6% according to WHO.

Google Bacon 18% 5% 6% to see all kinds of news like:
An 18% increase in that risk means the risk rises from 5% to just under 6%. That's the absolute risk. The 18% is called the relative risk.

I'm not a big processed meat or bacon eater so I didn't really mourn on hearing the 18% news. I was just surprised how deep you had to look beyond the headlines to get the whole picture.

[Michael Weber]

Interesting, thanks for posting that.

[Bert Kemp]

I guess I'm high risk with my 5 or 6 lbs of bacon and 50 to 60 hot dogs I eat a year. Guess I better cut back.

[Myk Rian]

You know what? It's all a bunch of hooey.
They say processed meats are bad, but we are in no way going to stop having it. Eggs were bad at one recent time. Now they're good.
We poisoned ourselves in the 40s and 50s with all the open air nuclear testing. Why should we worry about what we eat? It's too late for that.

[Tom M King]

Anyone who eats anything is going to die.

[Dave Anderson NH]

And to further Tom's comment, anyone who eats nothing is going to die too. Just remember the base death rate is one per.

[Mike Cutler]

100% of all people that develop cancer have drank water. I guess we should all stop drinking water.

[Art Mann]

I am surprised that anything published by the World Health Organisation is taken seriously.

[Allan Speers]

FWIW, I once read that the single most carcinogenic, "naturally occurring" substance known to man, is bacon. This was in something like Scientific American, not "Tree Huggers Weekly."

One might argue that bacon, per se, is not quite "naturally occurring," but you know what they meant. Not Dioxin.


It sure tastes good, though!

[Bruce Volden]

Well we die once, but look at all the days in between! Enjoy your bacon et al. Everything in moderation you know.

Bruce

[Randy Rose]

My philosophy has always vacillated between these 2 options:

A. Everybody dies of something.
B. Nobody is leaving this parking lot alive.

" And so it goes"

[Larry Frank]

I made a bacon wrapped pork tenderloin on the grill this last weekend. It may kill me but I will have a smile on my face.

[Rich Engelhardt]

I'm fine with this since I switched from bacon to sausage with my two eggs for breakfast every day!

[Tom M King]

My Mother will be 100 in April. I'm pretty sure she has never missed many days eating bacon, and she likes hotdogs too. I called her and asked if she had seen the news about how bad this was for her, and she had a good laugh. She did say that she had switched to the all beef hotdogs a long time ago, but wasn't about to give up bacon.

[Bill Orbine]

I started doing these things before they found out it was bad for me............ so I'm OK!