Skip to main content

A mighty meaty problem

It’s been a calamitous week for the carnivorous, with the alarming news that processed meats can cause cancer.

According to the World Health Organisation, processed meats such as bacon (Ooo, yum), sausages (Mmmm...) and ham (Yes, please!) do cause cancer. Oh – suddenly, I’m not quite so hungry.

This news is worse than discovering that the love of your life has been cheating on you – you can get another ‘significant other’, but bacon? That’s irreplaceable. Still, I can have a burger, right? No? Damn. I think I just heard some vegetarians sniggering.

‘Processed’ means anything treated to extend it’s shelf-life, including smoking, curing, or adding salt or preservatives.

Frighteningly, the WHO says that 50g of processed meat per day increases the risk of colorectal cancer by 18%. That’s a measly two rashers of bacon. At the weekend I had a bacon sarnie for breakfast, a ham sandwich for lunch and sausage casserole for dinner – I’m surprised I’m still around to write this column (but do check the obituaries section, just in case).

An estimated 34,000 deaths per year are attributable to cancer caused by diets high in processed meat. Surely this is great for your friendly local butcher? If processed meats are off the menu, then fresh meat must be the sensible, healthy, alternative. Bad news on that front – the WHO helpfully added that red meats generally are ‘probably’ also carcinogenic.

So that’s pork, beef and lamb off the menu too. If I were a chicken right now, I’d be practising my mooing or finding somewhere remote and wearing a leather jacket in the hope of not becoming lunch for the paranoid, meat-deprived, masses.

To add to the sense of alarm, the WHO report places meat in the same dangerous category as plutonium and alcohol, which would be one hell of a night out, but not one you would be wise to repeat very often.

Adding a little perspective to this worrisome story, a million people die in the UK each year from smoking-related cancer, and a further 600,000 die from cancer caused by alcohol.

Whilst this is all genuinely concerning for us as we much our way through the day, the list of things that do, or are alleged to, give you cancer is seemingly endless, with everything from the sun to your phone, pollution to being overweight, and even the inescapability of genetics, regularly blamed.

An awful lot of what we do, eat or are exposed to increases our risk, and much of it is out of our control. So should we back off the bacon, stop the sausage and hide from the ham? I’m not a doctor (I went to a fancy dress party as one once, but I’m told that doesn’t count) so I not qualified to lecture, but my entirely unsolicited advice would be: Everything in moderation. If every meal involves ripping open a packet of meatiness, you might be enjoying life, but you may be shortening it dramatically too.

I’m off for a nice salad. Maybe with gravy.

This post first appeared as my "Thank grumpy it's Friday" column, in the North West Evening Mail, on the 30th of October 2015, where it was retitled as "Meaty problem is health worry". You can view it on the paper's website here

The WHO's report wasn't exactly a surprise. An episode of the BBC's 'Horizon' programme reached exactly the same conclusions when it was aired earlier this year, and I know that's shocking - there was actually a 'Horizon' that wasn't to do with infinite universes, or where time started, or something else bloody complicated that makes you feel like an ignorant berk after the first five minutes.

It has made us take a look at what we're eating, and we've concluded that some changes do need to be made. Almost every day we consume some kind of processed meat, be it ham in a lunchtime sandwich, chorizo on a pizza in the evening, or bacon sarnies on Sunday morning.

Like all things (and as suggested in my column), moderation seems to be the sensible option here; to cut out all processed and red meats is possible, and we may well extend our lifespans, but wow - that's going to be a joyless diet. So it's less for us, rather than none at all. We're not big red meat eaters beyond the processed bits, so hopefully we're improving our longevity, but not at the expense of enjoying what we eat.

(As it's Halloween, I'm listening to a Christmas CD: Bowling For Soup's "Merry Flippin' Christmas, Volumes 1 and 2". It's how I roll. Get over it.)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Making an exhibition of yourself

Now and again, it’s good to reaffirm that you’re a (relatively) normal human being. One excellent way of doing this is to go to a business exhibition. Despite what you might have surmised from reading my previous columns, I am employable, and even capable of acting like a regular person most of the time, even joining in the Monday morning conversation about the weather over the weekend, and why (insert name of footyballs manager here) should be fired immediately. The mug! True, there are times, often involving a caffeine deficiency, where it is like having the distilled essence of ten moody teenagers in the room, but I try and get that out of the way when people I genuinely like aren’t around to see it. As part of my ongoing experiment with what others call ‘working’, my ‘job’ involves me occasionally needing to go and see what some of my colleagues get up to outside the office, and what our competitors do to try and make sure that they do whatever my colleagues do better than ...

Unstable Stables: Throw away the key

It’s comforting to know that there is one less threat to the people of Cumbria this week, following the conviction of white supremacist, Ethan Stables. The 20 year old from Barrow had planned to attack the town’s New Empire pub in June 2017, in the midst of a gay pride event. Despite social media posts saying he was “going to war” and planning to “slaughter”, online searches about how to make bombs and chemical poisons, and expressing hatred of Muslims, Jews and gay people, he claimed his online comments were merely to impress far-right friends. Fortunately, following Facebook posts about his intentions, the police were tipped off and armed officers intercepted him as he headed towards the pub. His aim was to kill anyone he found, with a machete. In a bizarre slip-up, Stables had erroneously added an innocent woman to his neo-Nazi Facebook group. When he vented his outrage at the Furness LGBT support group’s event, the shocked woman contacted the authorities. He’ll have ple...

Is it foggy? No.

When I get put in charge (which is bound to happen soon), I'm going to introduce a whole raft of new laws, for I shall be a just and fair ruler. I'm quite liking the title of 'Most Marvellous Emperor Of Sensible Regulations And Bountiful Lovingness Not To Mention Exceedingly Handsome', but it might be a bit long. On that basis, I'll settle for the more informal 'He Who Is Smashing' from my loyal subjects. Anyway, I digress. I do that sometimes - had you noticed? Here, then, is the first law that will introduced: grumpyf1 law No.1 - Turn your fog lights off, you complete git. Don't get me wrong; If it genuinely is foggy, fog lights are quite handy. The reason for introduction of this law is because 96% of the time (based on my own in-depth research) it isn't foggy when some utter cockwomble blinds you. This has always been a bit of a problem but in the last couple of years it seems to have escalated out of control, possibly because of the...