Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

WHO says processed meats rank alongside smoking as cancer causes

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 106 posts

Re: WHO says processed meats rank alongside smoking as cancer causes

#41

Post by Turing_Machine »

zeveb wrote: post #27

And wood smoke is more carcinogenic than tobacco smoke. So what? I don't want to live in a world without bacon, sausages, roast beef, pipes and cigars! 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.…

"The fundamental fallacy is the idea that tobacco is so dangerous that it, and anything comparably dangerous, must be banned."

And yet they never seem to apply this idea to "governments with too much power", despite said institutions being responsible for hundreds of millions of deaths.

Re: WHO says processed meats rank alongside smoking as cancer causes

#42

Post by [deleted] »

federico3 wrote: post #33
zeveb wrote: post #27

And wood smoke is more carcinogenic than tobacco smoke. So what? I don't want to live in a world without bacon, sausages, roast beef, pipes and cigars! 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.…

> The fundamental fallacy is the idea that tobacco is so dangerous that it, and anything comparably dangerous, must be banned. Please name a country where selling or buying cigarettes is not legal. > But you, I and everyone else on earth will die sometime, of something: whether it's cancer, congestive heart failure or something else entirely, we all die. Strawman. By that logic we would not use safety belts or cars.

[deleted]

Re: WHO says processed meats rank alongside smoking as cancer causes

#43

Post by matwood »

zeveb wrote: post #27

And wood smoke is more carcinogenic than tobacco smoke. So what? I don't want to live in a world without bacon, sausages, roast beef, pipes and cigars! 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.…

I always thought that raw tobacco while not good for you, is not nearly as bad as cigarettes. It's all the other crap cigarette companies put in there that really makes it bad for you.

So if you're going to smoke, make sure it's cuban cigars all the way ;)

Re: WHO says processed meats rank alongside smoking as cancer causes

#44

Post by matwood »

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #36
bluedino wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nitrates used to preserve the meat. Although, your risk is elevated only a tiny fraction compared to say, smoking cigarettes.

Nope. The nitrates themselves aren't the issue. It's the cooking that's the issue because the nitrates convert to nitrosomenes under high heat. If nitrates were the issue, then we should stop eating celery because that's where the nitrates in processed meats come from, celery juice.

What about cooked celery? Celery, onions, and garlic is pretty much the base of any vegetable mix for a meal I make.

Re: WHO says processed meats rank alongside smoking as cancer causes

#45

Post by mfoy_ »

cruise02 wrote: post #29

It's important to understand what "increased risk" means. From the linked article: > 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%. From a related article: > 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. http://www.cbsnews.com/new…

I'll take those odds.

Re: WHO says processed meats rank alongside smoking as cancer causes

#46

Post by ssmoot »

bluedino wrote: post #4
GordonS wrote: post #2

But what specifically is it about processed meat that makes it more of a risk than fresh cuts of meat?

The nitrates used to preserve the meat. Although, your risk is elevated only a tiny fraction compared to say, smoking cigarettes.

I feel like this would be much more informative if they were more specific then.

It's fairly easy to avoid pink-salt. Hebrew National hot dogs don't have it. "Uncured" bacon doesn't have it.

Problem solved without much compromise (IMO all-beef, nitrate/nitrite free hot dogs taste much better Oscar Mayer or Ballpark anyways but I love my high(er) quality meat-in-tube-form). Does celery seed fall under this?

BTW, "traditionally" cured bacon tastes better than "uncured" IMO, but it's pretty much impossible to find IME outside of boutique butchers. The "uncured" stuff is pretty easy to find these days. A few years ago it was hit & miss but now even the Fiesta (a lower-income anglophied Supermercado) around the corner carries it. I guess there's just a lot of economic incentive to use the pink-salt shortcut.

Re: WHO says processed meats rank alongside smoking as cancer causes

#47

Post by mfoy_ »

josho wrote: post #30
mathgeek wrote: post #14

Anyone have a good source for articles that eschew the political commentary in favor of just presenting the study findings in a concise summary? 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)?

This is the plight of today's journalism. Students are taught to find both sides of the issue and treat them equally, despite the fact that one side has a clear conflict of interest.

Or that lip service is paid to conflicting points of view (even if one side is nonsensical) in order to create a sense of false equivalence and therefore controversy.

Re: WHO says processed meats rank alongside smoking as cancer causes

#48

Post by ascorbic »

myth_buster wrote: post #23

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. Due to economies of McDonald's, Burger King et al, t…

"McDonald's, Burger King et al" aren't really affected by this. This is about smoked, salted or otherwise preserved meats. "Processed" doesn't covered mincing/grinding. They may be covered by the weaker claims about red meat in general.

Re: WHO says processed meats rank alongside smoking as cancer causes

#49

Post by dageshi »

matwood wrote: post #43
zeveb wrote: post #27

And wood smoke is more carcinogenic than tobacco smoke. So what? I don't want to live in a world without bacon, sausages, roast beef, pipes and cigars! 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.…

I always thought that raw tobacco while not good for you, is not nearly as bad as cigarettes. It's all the other crap cigarette companies put in there that really makes it bad for you. So if you're going to smoke, make sure it's cuban cigars all the way ;)

That and you don't inhale cigar/pipe tobacco plus for whatever reason they don't appear to be addictive in the same way cigarettes are. In an ideal world I wish all tobacco wasn't lumped together with cigarettes because while I'm sure smoking a pipe/cigar has its risks my impression is those risks are no where as bad as with cigarettes. Unfortunately I've never been able to find any real studies on cigars/pipes in isolation.

Re: WHO says processed meats rank alongside smoking as cancer causes

#50

Post by abandonliberty »

cruise02 wrote: post #29

It's important to understand what "increased risk" means. From the linked article: > 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%. From a related article: > 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. http://www.cbsnews.com/new…

Good point, many of the health scares we have can be appropriately rationalized by examining it this way.

The impact on socialized medicine is still significant when you consider an additional 1% of colon cancer cases in the population.

Post reply on HN