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

Processed meats as bad as cigarettes: bad reporting on good science

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 50 posts

Re: Processed meats as bad as cigarettes: bad reporting on good science

#41

Post by icebraining »

anunderachiever wrote: post #38

"Processed meat was classified as carcinogenic to humans (Group 1), based on sufficient evidence in humans that the consumption of processed meat causes colorectal cancer." http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/pr/2015/pdfs/pr240_E.pdf and here you find tobacco: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IARC_Group_1_carcinoge... So processed meat IS ranking next to tobacco according to IARC.

The groups have nothing to do with "ranking", they're based on the amount of evidence that we have for the link. From the IARC's FAQ:

> The classification indicates the weight of the evidence as to whether an agent is capable of causing cancer (technically called “hazard”), but it does not measure the likelihood that cancer will occur (technically called “risk”) as a result of exposure to the agent.

(Emphasis theirs)

http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/News/Q&A_ENG.pdf

Re: Processed meats as bad as cigarettes: bad reporting on good science

#42

Post by 6t6t6 »

What apparently a lot of people fails to understand is that the IARC list reflects is how sure we are that a substance is carcinogenic, but not how much it raises the risk of cancer.

So we can equally be sure that plutonium and bacon are a risk for health. But we also know that eating plutonium is more dangerous than bacon.

Re: Processed meats as bad as cigarettes: bad reporting on good science

#44

Post by tkyjonathan »

AlisdairO wrote: post #35
tkyjonathan wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, guys, but you are all wrong. WHO is a huge and difficult body to get agreements from. After years and 800 studies, they decided today to label processed meats as carcinogens. Btw, 15% of lifelong smokers get lung cancer whereas 15-19% of meat-eaters get some sort of cancer (mainly, colorectal, prostate and breast). I can appreciate that this is a surprise, but the data has been there for more than a decade.

You haven't established that cancer in meat eaters is largely caused by eating meat, whereas it is quite clear that overall cancer rate drastically increases in smokers. In fact, while vegetarian diets do reduce the risk of cancer, the difference is by comparison modest - the overall risk of cancer in vegetarians is ~10% lower.

That isn't true. There are causal links between meat and cancer. You have: IGF1, saturated fat, sulphar-based animo acids like methionine, mycobacterial load, oxidative stress, purification in the intestine and more recently, that nuXX sugar found in protein.

Re: Processed meats as bad as cigarettes: bad reporting on good science

#45

Post by tkyjonathan »

AlisdairO wrote: post #35
tkyjonathan wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, guys, but you are all wrong. WHO is a huge and difficult body to get agreements from. After years and 800 studies, they decided today to label processed meats as carcinogens. Btw, 15% of lifelong smokers get lung cancer whereas 15-19% of meat-eaters get some sort of cancer (mainly, colorectal, prostate and breast). I can appreciate that this is a surprise, but the data has been there for more than a decade.

You haven't established that cancer in meat eaters is largely caused by eating meat, whereas it is quite clear that overall cancer rate drastically increases in smokers. In fact, while vegetarian diets do reduce the risk of cancer, the difference is by comparison modest - the overall risk of cancer in vegetarians is ~10% lower.

Vegetarians still consume proteins from animals like casein and cholesterol from eggs. There have been a lot of studies connecting casein to cancer as well (when protein intake is over 7% from calories).

Re: Processed meats as bad as cigarettes: bad reporting on good science

#46

Post by tkyjonathan »

zsupalla wrote: post #36
tkyjonathan wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, guys, but you are all wrong. WHO is a huge and difficult body to get agreements from. After years and 800 studies, they decided today to label processed meats as carcinogens. Btw, 15% of lifelong smokers get lung cancer whereas 15-19% of meat-eaters get some sort of cancer (mainly, colorectal, prostate and breast). I can appreciate that this is a surprise, but the data has been there for more than a decade.

This is a perfect example of confusing correlation with causation.

"This is a perfect example of confusing correlation with causation." You are confusing two different fields of science. This isn't physics where an action causes a reaction. This is biology and the human body is a massive ecosystem. The 800 studies that "eventually" reached the WHO is the best way to determine a connection between two things. This is decades of research and maybe around 1million human subjects that were studied in total.

Re: Processed meats as bad as cigarettes: bad reporting on good science

#47

Post by DanBC »

zsupalla wrote: post #36
tkyjonathan wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, guys, but you are all wrong. WHO is a huge and difficult body to get agreements from. After years and 800 studies, they decided today to label processed meats as carcinogens. Btw, 15% of lifelong smokers get lung cancer whereas 15-19% of meat-eaters get some sort of cancer (mainly, colorectal, prostate and breast). I can appreciate that this is a surprise, but the data has been there for more than a decade.

This is a perfect example of confusing correlation with causation.

The WHO report is very clear: red meat and processed meat cause an increase in risk of some cancer. And they're very clear that it's causal, not just correlation. And they're clear that the risk is increased by 15-20%. But that increase is on a very low risk.

Re: Processed meats as bad as cigarettes: bad reporting on good science

#48

Post by DanBC »

anunderachiever wrote: post #38

"Processed meat was classified as carcinogenic to humans (Group 1), based on sufficient evidence in humans that the consumption of processed meat causes colorectal cancer." http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/pr/2015/pdfs/pr240_E.pdf and here you find tobacco: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IARC_Group_1_carcinoge... So processed meat IS ranking next to tobacco according to IARC.

So this tells us how certain we are that they cause cancer. And we are certain that red meat causes cancer, and we are certain that smoking causes cancer.

This ranking does not tell us how much cancer is caused. We know that there is a low risk of colon cancer, and that eating red meat will increase that risk by about 15 to 20%. This ends up at a very low risk.

Cigarettes massively increase the risk of lung cancer. (And other cancers).

Re: Processed meats as bad as cigarettes: bad reporting on good science

#49

Post by eimai134 »

anunderachiever wrote: post #10

Kinda funny how hard some people try to reject a finding which is as well supported as it is obvious ... red meat is bad. Same logic applies here as with cigarettes - you decide if you want to take the risk. Beyond your personal consequences - meat and dairy industry is also directly destructive to the environment and society on a global level ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3302820/ ). http://lmgtfy.com/?q=site%3Anatu…

That's very true. People are very averse to admitting that meat and dairy contribute negatively to their health, despite the many studies that show the contrary.

Re: Processed meats as bad as cigarettes: bad reporting on good science

#50

Post by AlisdairO »

tkyjonathan wrote: post #44
AlisdairO wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You haven't established that cancer in meat eaters is largely caused by eating meat, whereas it is quite clear that overall cancer rate drastically increases in smokers. In fact, while vegetarian diets do reduce the risk of cancer, the difference is by comparison modest - the overall risk of cancer in vegetarians is ~10% lower.

That isn't true. There are causal links between meat and cancer. You have: IGF1, saturated fat, sulphar-based animo acids like methionine, mycobacterial load, oxidative stress, purification in the intestine and more recently, that nuXX sugar found in protein.

Did you read my comment?

I didn't deny causal links between meat and cancer. I denied that the causal links between meat and cancer caused anything close to as much additional total cancer risk as smoking does. That's a viewpoint that is supported by any credible source you care to name.

Post reply on HN