Eating hotdogs, bacon can cause cancer: WHO
Study stirs backlash from meat industry, which calls findings ‘dramatic, alarmist’
There are plenty of health-related reasons to avoid that second hotdog or rethink your decision to double the bacon — and cancer is one of them, the World Health Organization said on Monday.
The WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has announced it is classifying processed meats as a carcinogenic — meaning there is now “sufficient” evidence to conclude that the consumption of everything from sausages to corned beef can cause cancer, particularly colorectal cancer.
The IARC also found that red meat can “probably” cause cancer, although the evidence it found to support this link is less robust.
These conclusions — published in the medical journal Lancet Oncology — were arrived at by 22 global experts after reviewing more than 800 studies.
The IARC’s announcement is the strongest statement yet by a public health body linking meat and cancer. It has also provoked anxiety amongst carnivores and backlash from the meat industry, which blasted the IARC findings as “dramatic and alarmist.”
On the face of it, the announcement seems frightening. The IARC has designated processed meats a “Group 1” cancer hazard, which places them in the same category as everything from asbestos to tobacco.
But the “Group 1” category only means there is sufficient evidence that these things can lead to cancer; it does not mean everything in this category is equally dangerous or equally likely to cause cancer.
Experts also stress that the cancer risk of consuming a smoked meat sandwich still pales in comparison to that of smoking a cigarette. At this point, the public health message isn’t to quit meat, which can be a good source of nutrients such as protein and iron, just to eat it in moderation.
“I don’t think people need to all of a sudden become vegetarian or avoid meat altogether,” said Rayjean Hung, a cancer epidemiologist with Mount Sinai’s Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, who has previously worked with the IARC. “You need to think about what is a balanced meal, what is moderation.”
The evidence linking cancer and meat consumption has been accumulating for some time, according to Hung.
Even before the IARC’s announcement, the Canadian Cancer Society was recommending that people re- strict their red meat consumption to three servings per week. They also recommended avoiding processed meat altogether (or, perhaps more realistically, reserving it for “special occasions” such as holiday dinners and sporting events).
But the IARC’s analysis is the most comprehensive to date, examining 800 papers and considering the evidence from a variety of angles, including human risk, animal risk and toxicology, said Katie Wright, a senior manager of research communi- cations with the Canadian Cancer Society’s Ontario division.
While there isn’t enough data to conclude what constitutes a “safe” level of meat, the IARC did find that greater consumption translated to greater risk: for every 50 grams of processed meat (the equivalent of one or two bacon strips), the cancer risk grows by 18 per cent. For red meat, every 100 grams increased risk by 17 per cent.
While these numbers sound dramatic, Wright cautioned that they also need to be taken in context. Compare them with tobacco, which increases cancer risk by 20 or 30 fold. In the United Kingdom, tobacco is also the cause of 86 per cent of lung cancers; red meat and processed meat only accounts for 21 per cent of all bowel cancers (Canadian statistics for the percentage of cancers caused by meat consumption are currently unavailable, Wright says).
And while colorectal cancer is a serious disease — there will be 25,100 cases in Canada this year — people who do get cancer from red meat or processed meat are “eating red meats or processed meats every day, for a long period of time,” Wright said.