The Anonymous Widower

Cooked Meats and Cancer

The World Cancer Research Fund are now saying that cooked meats, such as ham and salami and bacon, can cause cancer and should be banned from lunch boxes.

They have form in this area and have been warning for some time.  Do I eat much cooked meats?  Not really, as I possibly eat them once or twice a month.  I did eat a bit more at the weekend, but it was my party.

They also provoked this blast from the Daily Mail.  I’ve read that and that perhaps says one important thing and that is moderation in all things.

But what is missing from all of this research and rants is any degree of statistical sense.

We could take a silly example, which states that if you spend all your time on a computer, playing computer games as a child that this is bad for your health.  Other research could also say that playing on railway tracks is also bad.  They both probably are, but the second is many times more dangerous than the first and people these days tend to lump everything as equally bad.

Now my worry about this “ham sandwich is bad for you”  scare is that I’ve never seen any relative risk information compared to say cigarettes, obesity, excessive drinking or spending eight hours a day on a sunbed.  So you get the obese smoker giving up cooked meats as his bit towards better health.

So what are the relative risks?

The best book on the subject is The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg.  He analyses the risks and prints them in detail.  Everyone should read his book.  You may not agree with everything he says, but it will certainly make you think.

But bear in mind one thing;  if you want to live a long time, you can increase your chances by not smoking, eating a good diet, exercising and maintaining a healthy weight.  I do all four.  But then so did my late wife and she died at fifty-nine!

One point about diet is that diagnosed coeliacs on a gluten-free diet have a twenty-five percent less chance of cancer.  That more than mitigates the bad affects of a ham sandwich in gluten-free bread.

August 18, 2009 - Posted by AnonW | Health | Bjorn Lomborg, Cancer, Coeliac/Gluten-Free