Recently the World Health
Organization has published the research stating that the processed meats
increase the probability of getting bowel cancer.
Although some of the local media immediately turned it into a message of doom for all mankind (I'm referring to the news I read on the subway 2 weeks ago), if you actually read it, you may as well come to a conclusion, that all the fuss has been for nothing. Quite interesting in the report is an often recurring word "probably" - the red meat is said to probably cause cancer, but not confirmed, due to the lack of evidence.
But let's get to known facts:
First of all, we need to define what the processed meat is - a product of animal origin that has been "modified to either extend its shelf life or change the taste and the main methods are smoking, curing, or adding salt or preservatives".
Although some of the local media immediately turned it into a message of doom for all mankind (I'm referring to the news I read on the subway 2 weeks ago), if you actually read it, you may as well come to a conclusion, that all the fuss has been for nothing. Quite interesting in the report is an often recurring word "probably" - the red meat is said to probably cause cancer, but not confirmed, due to the lack of evidence.
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| http://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/styles/story_medium/public/thumbnails/image/2015/10/26/14/Red-Meat-1.jpg [dostęp 01-11-2015] |
But let's get to known facts:
First of all, we need to define what the processed meat is - a product of animal origin that has been "modified to either extend its shelf life or change the taste and the main methods are smoking, curing, or adding salt or preservatives".
Processed meats have been given
Group 1 classification in the IARC classification groups, placing it alongside
cigarettes in terms of cancer hazard.
It is important to have in mind, that it's not the meat itself that is carcinogenic, but the chemicals used to process it.
The numbers are clearly stated in the report, and it is up to us to decide if we want to take them under consideration. It is worth noticing, though, that the WHO stressed that we should not give up our culinary habits, just maybe cut back on the meat a little.
Then again, with so many other harmful things in our life (tobacco, alcohol, preservatives etc.), will anyone care? Or is it a reason enough to go vegan?
Additional read:
The meat defenders strike back! - http://time.com/4086894/who-meat-cancer-industry-lobby/
Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/health-34615621
It is important to have in mind, that it's not the meat itself that is carcinogenic, but the chemicals used to process it.
The numbers are clearly stated in the report, and it is up to us to decide if we want to take them under consideration. It is worth noticing, though, that the WHO stressed that we should not give up our culinary habits, just maybe cut back on the meat a little.
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http://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/styles/story_medium/public/thumbnails/image/2015/10/26/14/Red-Meat-2.jpg [dostęp 01-11-2015]
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Then again, with so many other harmful things in our life (tobacco, alcohol, preservatives etc.), will anyone care? Or is it a reason enough to go vegan?
Additional read:
The meat defenders strike back! - http://time.com/4086894/who-meat-cancer-industry-lobby/
Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/health-34615621
by the definition of processed meat you provided:
ReplyDelete("[...]the main methods are smoking, curing, or adding salt or preservatives [...]")
If I take a piece of chicken and add salt to it, is it now processed meat and causes cancer?
I wouldn't go that far, it's rather the additives already present in the meat you're buying. However, I think if u decided to make your own ham or sth, that would qualify.
Deletewould qualify as what?
DeleteYour self-made ham would qualify as processed meat.
Deletebtw. refraining from processed meat doesn't make you vegan
ReplyDeleteAnother one? Oh crap, I hate those topics. We're going to die anyway sooner or later, and if I had a choice to die 5-10 years before while being happy from achieving something in my life, even hapiness from living up to that point, I would still consider it rather than living longer forcing myself to stay away from everything that might be unhealthy.
ReplyDeleteLike, seriously, our world is one giant chemistry lab, it's impossible to avoid everything, and everything is basically killing us, the choice is rather to pick X out of Y bad things, one guy smokes, another one drinks, and I like eating meat. The problem is when you do all of that at once.
The fact is, that nowadays everything is killing us out. From an obvious serial killer to a carrot that claimed to be EKO. One thing we are more conscious, another less. People, more frequently, that it was a couple years ago, try to live healthier, rejecting the things that obviously killing us. The problem is that another people see that and use it against us. That’s the world we live. Now when something is claimed to be healthier, EKO, it doesn’t really have to be like that. It just sells better. EKO vegetables and grow near highway. EKO eggs, EKO meat and what that animal eat it doesn’t matter. Keeping animal in free-range system. It has air, it can go anywhere it wants, it eats healthy and natural food. Yeah, right. In many cases open windows in buildings of industrial farm is enough to call it free-range system.
ReplyDeleteI don't like this topic really, for me saying that this is bad and red meat causes cancer it's like saying the water is bad and causes cancer, because everyone that have cancer drink water right ?
ReplyDeleteI think it's a bit too much. You know in America they eat meat all the time with cheese and it's swimming in sauce's and it's all fat and they eat no veggies. I think we should treat meat as a luxury and eat it from time to time, not every day. We are still not used to digest meat, because we aren't. It's logical to think that eating bacon every day, every breakfast is not going to be good for you it's all about not overdoing it.
But still there are many many factors that may cause cancer that it's hard to unanimously decide whether meat is bad or is it tobacco that is bad for you and causes cancer.
It's very sad nowadays that people who care about healthy diet and never smoke cigarettes, find out that that they got cancer. Because in every meal we have got chemicals. The animals are fed by this. Air is contaminated, water, animal, food and whole environment also. Sooner or later we'll all die!!!
ReplyDeleteA wise man once said: "Every breath brings us closer to death"
Colorectal cancer affects many people, and the perpetrator of everything is bad diet. It is important to be interested in what we eat and know how the product affects our body. Colorectal cancer (from what I know) not the result of carcinogenicity red meat, but too little fiber in the diet that prevents inflammation and tumor formation intestine. I read an article similar to yours where it was written that a group of people, (which has undergone this experiment) were people who ate meat practically all the time. I guess so that they do not eat too many fruits and vegetables, which badly affect their health. At the end I will answer your question - everyone is good reason to become a vegetarian :)
ReplyDeleteEverywhere I read only about healthy nutrition and that everything is unhealthy. I think the most important thing is moderation. Personally, I eat everything what I like, but I try to keep the right proportion between things which are considered to be unhealthy and healthy.
ReplyDeleteReturning to the topic of meat - it seems to me that the problem is not the meat itself but the way of animal nutrition. Farmers feed the animals using chemicals. Here I see a problem.
Fish are generally considered as a healthy food. But even here the situation is similar. Fish taken from the natural waters are healthy. In contrast, fish which grown in too small surfaces using chemical feed are unhealthy for people.
Nowadays people usually forget about golden mean. Our whole surrounding has probably some negative effects on us, the thing is that we haven't discovered all of them yet, only few. Like, if someone smokes from time to time (so-called social smokers), it's not going to kill him. The situation is the same when it comes to eating meat. It's not fatal. When we add all the factors together, then we got the disease. In 10 years, we might find out that there are some vegetables that cause cancer. Or the air that we're breating with cause the fatal disease. I'm not going to spend my whole life giving up on another pleasures like it is already considered to be bad to sunbath, drink, smoke, eating meat etc. When someone knows the restraint, can't blame oneself in the case of the disease. It can happen to anyone. Sooner or later we'll all die, the thing is to find the golden mean in everything that happens and surrounds us.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately all products lost on the quality. There is much chemistry now, polluted environment. Stimulants are for people, but all of his head.
ReplyDeleteChemistry in the meat. This is how fed to the animals. Nowadays everything is processed, the quality of products are more bad.
I think that transition to vegan will not any good, because you must something to eat, and everything affects the health.
I think that nowadays everything can cause cancer so it’s probable that the red meat also can do that. To be honest, everything can kill us but we can’t be hysterics.
ReplyDeleteWe all die and I would rather spend my life using, eating, drinking, etc. what I like, because when I die I want to say/think i spend my life how I want.
ReplyDeleteNext anti-meat article :)
ReplyDeleteI agree that red meat has a big influence on our health, especially as it is very processed. And i think that a lot depends of quality of the meat. I know that there are special breeders which breed different animals in good conditions, without using chemistry and they made very tasty(and more expensive) meat. But like others said almost almost everything have chemistry now, even vegetables that are sprayed with harmful chemistry.
Just more stating of the obvious, we've been told for decades that large amounts of processed and red meat is bad for us. Now everything is processed and when we want to buy something really healthy it's very very expensive. I think we should think about what we eat but we shouldn't reject everything what is potentially unhealthy. We should keep right proportion between things which are healthy and unhealthy. Of course eating a lot of fast foot isn't a good idea but it's really tasty and eating that kind of food ocsasionally won't kill us so fast.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteOh well… There are many products which affect our organisms. I have that luck that most of red meat I eat comes from small production where no chemicals are added, animals are feed with natural food only and all processes of meat preservation are done by me and my dad. The more it is changed by producer, the higher possibility it would cause problems.
ReplyDeleteIf we look more closely at what we eat we are deciding that we shouldn't eat anything. There are too many dangerous elements in air, earth, water and whatever. We're all gonna die for something maybe cancer or we die in accident but I think everything is for people if we think about that what we do.
ReplyDeleteI guess we will have to be more and more careful with what we are eating every year from now on. Producers are adding more chemical stuff then they used to before and it is getting harder to find healthy food. Concerning other things like alkohol and tabacco it's all up to ourselves and how much we care about our health.
ReplyDeleteVegetarians incoming, watch out. Eat a little bit of this and a little bit of that and you'll be fine. Stop panicking about getting cancer from anything, cause you probably will anyway. Eat a burger every now and then. Quit smoking (all you hypocrites).
ReplyDeleteAlso, it's not "alongside cigarettes in terms of cancer hazard". Stop that. Just stop. They've just confirmed an increased risk (as if that's not obvious). So your tiny tiny risk just got a little bit less tiny. Whatever. The risk of getting cancer from the sun is orders of magnitude higher.
There are many factors that may cause cancer. In my opinion the most important thing is moderation. The meat is not healthy when that is processed or not. We can get cancer when we are healthy, doing some sport, don’t smoke etc.
ReplyDeleteI agree with some people saying, it's not the meat itself, but the things that are added to artificaly improve its durability, taste, smell. We should perform a careful research about a real influence that all these methods, that are for example used in big shops to revive spoiled meat, have on our health instead of blaming just the meat and proving it is the cause. Maybe, when people that were tested were changing their read meat diet, they also changed some other parts of it and that was the real case the cancer probability lowered.
ReplyDeleteI guess that nowadays EVERYTHING causes SOMETHING. Everybody gotta die, we are not immortal, and not eating meat or anything else won't change it. I would rather prefer to die in my 60's after a life without any restrictions than in my 70's after miserable life in which I would care about everything that would kill me (pesticides from veggies probably would kill me anyway).
ReplyDeleteI think nowadays it's very hard to live one-hundred-percent-healthy life. Everything we eat, everywhere we go, there is pollution and chemicals. The best way to deal with it, is to do not worry so much about it. Otherwise, you would go crazy.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately no matter how many restrictions we would impose on ourselves, there will always be something that have negative impact on us. Even when we don't know it yet. Nowadays we can't be sure about anything. One day it is said that meat causes disease, another one we can find out that something else can kill us, like vegetables. Scientists outdistance each other with new researches, often very contradictory ones. I think that we have to live our lives without bothering ourselves with all of these talks about how harmful everything is. I'm not saying that it's not important to care about our health, I only mean that we don't own the control over everything and the knowledge that we already posses isn't complete so we can't really get crazy after every scientific news.
ReplyDeleteThese days , food which we eat dont have much influace on our health . All kind of food can cause cancer . Most people, whose live healthy got cancer in early age .
ReplyDelete