Oh well....might as well take up smoking again, i ain't giving up my bacon
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/bacon-sausages-big-cancer-threat-083910518.html
Fuck you, science.
Bacon is overrated.
I'd say bacon is less deadly than cigarettes because there's no such thing as second hand bacon.
I'd generally say ignore this. The state of nutrition science is terrible, reporting on nutrition science is the only thing vastly worse in the field. Nutrition and how it effects the body is complicated, most studies are nibbling at the periphery, then the media runs wild with it, then even worse, regulatory and advisory bodies make proclamations based off of a very minimal amount of research. The 1950s study that lead to the popular wisdom that saturated fats are terrible and we should cut things like milk, eggs, etc from our diets and replace them with alternatives directly lead to the huge increase in consumption of trans fats, which at least a good amount of research has shown is far worse for you. Meanwhile the methodology of the origin study for these decisions and its results have largely since been debunked, as far back as the 1980s, but organizations like the USDA and AMA have been slow to acknowledge that.
The hilarious state of the science was laid particularly bare a couple years ago when, in the same week, two peer reviewed articles were published in the same week: one which said consuming eggs regularly is worse than tobacco consumption in terms of long term health effects, and another that said regular consumption of eggs is associated with better health outcomes. The reality is no one really knows, the type of research that is necessary to bring nutrition science up to where it be, for reasons I've never fully understood, simply is not being done.
In the place of better science that can lead to meaningful nutritional guidelines, we've instead given rise to people that "come to their own conclusions" with a mixture of their personal experience, experience with customers of theirs (in the cases of persons who are dietitians and such), "common sense", outright pseudoscience and etc. Most of these people are only right in the same manner that a stopped clock is. The Michael Pollan's of the world, the Paleo advocates and etc are a direct result of not having anything close to usable, reliable nutrition science.
That being said, I think some of these guys do a good job of explaining why nutrition science is so poor, even if their prescribed eating habits are based on even less empirical evidence. Pollan's explanation of why nutrition science tends to constantly refute itself is a persuasive one. Foods are complex, how the body breaks foods down and uses them is also complex. The gut bacteria that are key to this have been called one of the last great "unexplored frontiers of human anatomy." The relationship between how you combine different foods in different meals is complex. Scientists cannot meaningfully control for this many variables at once, so they tend to craft studies that try to isolate specific foods and then break them down into their nutritional components in order to come to conclusions about those components. It's this that leads to things like "fiber helps prevent colon cancer" then later studies that say "eh, maybe not" or that Omega-3 fatty acids can cut the risk of heart disease to "eh, maybe not as much as we said...and if the fish you eat to get these EFAs are high in mercury then it may still be a net-negative." People don't in the real world just eat fiber by itself, fiber comes in food that has lots of other stuff in it. Same for EFAs, same for saturated fats etc. Sure, you can actually buy direct fiber and fish oil supplements, but the reality is only a small minority of people are ever going to get their nutrition in pills/powders/liquids that are a concentrated source of one single thing. And even those people will continue to eat real food due to the necessity of you know, eating real food, and the interplay between those and the direct supplements of specific nutrients is poorly understand (essentially it's never been researched.)
Some stupid study has been going around Facebook saying cheese is more addictive than crack. :rolleyes:
Have you ever tried to quit?
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on October 24, 2015, 10:05:15 AM
In the place of better science that can lead to meaningful nutritional guidelines, we've instead given rise to people that "come to their own conclusions" with a mixture of their personal experience, experience with customers of theirs (in the cases of persons who are dietitians and such), "common sense", outright pseudoscience and etc. Most of these people are only right in the same manner that a stopped clock is. The Michael Pollan's of the world, the Paleo advocates and etc are a direct result of not having anything close to usable, reliable nutrition science.
That being said, I think some of these guys do a good job of explaining why nutrition science is so poor, even if their prescribed eating habits are based on even less empirical evidence. Pollan's explanation of why nutrition science tends to constantly refute itself is a persuasive one. Foods are complex, how the body breaks foods down and uses them is also complex. The gut bacteria that are key to this have been called one of the last great "unexplored frontiers of human anatomy." The relationship between how you combine different foods in different meals is complex. Scientists cannot meaningfully control for this many variables at once, so they tend to craft studies that try to isolate specific foods and then break them down into their nutritional components in order to come to conclusions about those components. It's this that leads to things like "fiber helps prevent colon cancer" then later studies that say "eh, maybe not" or that Omega-3 fatty acids can cut the risk of heart disease to "eh, maybe not as much as we said...and if the fish you eat to get these EFAs are high in mercury then it may still be a net-negative." People don't in the real world just eat fiber by itself, fiber comes in food that has lots of other stuff in it. Same for EFAs, same for saturated fats etc. Sure, you can actually buy direct fiber and fish oil supplements, but the reality is only a small minority of people are ever going to get their nutrition in pills/powders/liquids that are a concentrated source of one single thing. And even those people will continue to eat real food due to the necessity of you know, eating real food, and the interplay between those and the direct supplements of specific nutrients is poorly understand (essentially it's never been researched.)
My guess is that with nutritional science, just like with many other sciences, poor understanding of statistical tools is a big factor in such ragged advancement of knowledge. Statistics is probably the most susceptible science to the "know enough to be dangerous" phenomenon. Then there is also the publication bias, when only significant results get published, and what may get published is that 1 study out of 20 that shows a significant result at a 95% confidence level.
I used to eat a lot of sausages, but I'm much more of a chicken guy these days.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on October 24, 2015, 06:38:23 PM
I used to eat a lot of sausages, but I'm much more of a chicken guy these days.
Enough about your sexuality. :rolleyes:
Dammit, not fast enough.
Quote from: Ed Anger on October 24, 2015, 07:54:41 PM
Dammit, not fast enough.
:D
Well you could have spent some extra time making a better joke, fish involved perhaps.
That was my thought process as well. I was trying to find a way to replace chicken with fish, because chicken just doesn't work. Can't even make a Brain reference with that. I decided to pass after some serious deliberation. :(
I think you just leave it open-ended. We don't really want to know what he does with the chicken anyway.
Quote from: Josephus on October 24, 2015, 09:47:47 AM
Oh well....might as well take up smoking again, i ain't giving up my bacon
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/bacon-sausages-big-cancer-threat-083910518.html
at least, the threat is solely to those who consume the bacon.
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on October 24, 2015, 08:23:37 PM
I think you just leave it open-ended. We don't really want to know what he does with the chicken anyway.
:hmm: That works.
Tim loves the cock
Well, it means I am safe. I don't eat bacon often (once or twice a year).
Quote from: Rex Francorum on October 24, 2015, 11:29:32 PM
Well, it means I am safe. I don't eat bacon often (once or twice a year).
I'm sure you're killing yourself in some other way that science hasn't thought of yet.
How deadly are bacon cigarettes?
But cigarettes stink up the whole room and the smell of bacon is delicious. :mmm:
Quote from: DGuller on October 24, 2015, 11:34:13 PM
I'm sure you're killing yourself in some other way that science hasn't thought of yet.
Hoverboard accident?
Quote from: DGuller on October 24, 2015, 11:34:13 PM
Quote from: Rex Francorum on October 24, 2015, 11:29:32 PM
Well, it means I am safe. I don't eat bacon often (once or twice a year).
I'm sure you're killing yourself in some other way that science hasn't thought of yet.
Actually, you are probably right. :lol:
See the Jews were right all along.
So how long before they start taxing and trying to ban red meat?
So it's not really that bad, but for every daily intake 50g of processed/cured meat (bacon, sausages, salami, etc.) the chance of bowel cancer is increased by 18%.
I will continue to worship at the altar of The Iberian Swine Gods.
I smoked a quarter pack of bacon this morning. :Embarrass:
Quote from: Warspite on October 26, 2015, 06:47:05 AM
So how long before they start taxing and trying to ban red meat?
"red meat" includes just about any meat too. Veal, lamb, pork are all red meat.
If eating ham is that bad then the nation of Spain would have exceedingly high cancer rates.
I've just been looking at the figures so that I can spin them. It seems that in England and Wales there were 500k deaths in 2012 of which 14k were from bowel cancer. Which makes for a 1 in 35 chance of dying of bowel cancer. Increasing the 14k by 18% increases that to a 1 in 30 chance. But, if you smoke enough, you will probably die of lung cancer or heart disease so can safely eat as many bacon sandwiches as you like.
Quote from: Liep on October 26, 2015, 10:01:14 AM
So it's not really that bad, but for every daily intake 50g of processed/cured meat (bacon, sausages, salami, etc.) the chance of bowel cancer is increased by 18%.
I think I ate 300 g the other day :weep:
Nice knowing you guys.
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 26, 2015, 10:34:11 AM
If eating ham is that bad then the nation of Spain would have exceedingly high cancer rates.
Looks like we do have some rather high bowel cancer incidence rates: http://www.wcrf.org/int/cancer-facts-figures/data-specific-cancers/colorectal-cancer-statistics
ok, ham is bad.
Btw, Mrs. CC made a wonderful peanut sauce and broccoli tofu dish last night. I wonder if that was just coincidence. :hmm:
It's my right to kill myself. There's no such thing as passive baconing.
Awful, awful reporting. Ugh.
The statistical significance of increased cancer risk due to eating processed meat is now high. The actual increase in the odds of you getting cancer from eating bacon are low. Quote: http://www.buzzfeed.com/tomchivers/bacon-and-sausages-do-cause-cancer-says-the-who
QuoteTaken crudely, the IARC's report suggests that eating 50g of bacon every day would raise your risk from 64 in 100,000 to 72 in 100,000, or from 0.064% to 0.072%. Over a lifetime, your risk is about 5%, according to the NHS; eating 50g of processed meat a day will raise that to about 6%.
Smoking on the other hand raises your cancer risk a LOT:
QuoteFor comparison, research on smoking and cancer found that men who smoked 25 cigarettes a day were 24 times higher risk of developing lung cancer, or a 2,400% increase.
So basically if you ate 9.6kg of bacon a day you be as likely to get cancer as smoking 25 cigarettes (assuming there was a linear relationship between the amount ate / smokes and the probability of getting cancer).
Or to put it another way, smoking 1 cigarette a day is still 7.68 times more likely than eating 50g of bacon a day for causing cancer.
Quote from: Hamilcar on October 26, 2015, 02:07:59 PM
Awful, awful reporting. Ugh.
The statistical significance of increased cancer risk due to eating processed meat is now high. The actual increase in the odds of you getting cancer from eating bacon are low. Quote: http://www.buzzfeed.com/tomchivers/bacon-and-sausages-do-cause-cancer-says-the-who
QuoteTaken crudely, the IARC's report suggests that eating 50g of bacon every day would raise your risk from 64 in 100,000 to 72 in 100,000, or from 0.064% to 0.072%. Over a lifetime, your risk is about 5%, according to the NHS; eating 50g of processed meat a day will raise that to about 6%.
Smoking on the other hand raises your cancer risk a LOT:
QuoteFor comparison, research on smoking and cancer found that men who smoked 25 cigarettes a day were 24 times higher risk of developing lung cancer, or a 2,400% increase.
Is it awful reporting, or awful use of the findings? If you believe the first article, bacon will be put in the same category as smoking by WHO. If that is accurate, then the shame is on WHO for not distinguishing between statistical significance and practical significance.
Quote from: DGuller on October 26, 2015, 02:29:43 PM
Is it awful reporting, or awful use of the findings? If you believe the first article, bacon will be put in the same category as smoking by WHO. If that is accurate, then the shame is on WHO for not distinguishing between statistical significance and practical significance.
Bit of both. Seems the WHO may have ulterior motives. It's fine to say that excess meat consumption is bad for the planet and for animal welfare, but don't try and scare me off with a mild increase in cancer risk.
Here is some good reporting to the rescue. From the Globe and Mail.
QuoteBy now, you've probably seen the horrific headlines warning that bacon – bacon! – causes cancer. So do hot dogs, sausages, corned beef, sliced ham and beef jerky.
Processed meats are lethal, just like tobacco and asbestos, according to the august International Agency for Research on Cancer. In fact, all red meat – beef, pork, lamb – is also "probably" carcinogenic.
But let's delve a little deeper than the alarmist headlines, starting with what the IARC said exactly.
In the monograph, published in the journal Lancet Oncology, a panel of international experts reviewed more than 800 studies examining the link between meat consumption and cancer.
It concluded that eating more than 50 grams of processed meat daily (about two slices of bacon) increases your risk of colorectal cancer by 17 per cent. Similarly, eating more than 100 grams of red meat daily (roughly a four-ounce steak) increases the risk by 18 per cent.
Bear in mind that those are relative risks, and your chance of developing colorectal cancer is already fairly low.
Based on these estimates, about 66 in every 1,000 people who eat a lot of red meat or processed meat will develop colorectal cancer in their lifetime; by comparison, 56 of every 1,000 who eat very little meat, processed or otherwise, will develop colorectal cancer.
Saying that processed meat is as risky as tobacco or asbestos is highly misleading too. To understand why news stories would say so, you have to understand the byzantine way the IARC functions.
The expert group does hazard identification, not risk assessment. Practically, that means they determine, yes or no, whether something may cause cancer, but not how potent it is at a causing cancer.
Since 1971, the IARC has reviewed 982 products, substances and exposures. They found every one of them – from plutonium to sunshine, from cellphones to sawdust – posed a theoretical risk of cancer (with one exception: yoga pants).
Each substance is also classified according to its potential hazard. Processed meat has been placed in Group 1– "carcinogenic to humans" – along with things such as plutonium, asbestos and tobacco. Red meat is in Group 2A – "probably carcinogenic to humans" – along with alcohol, coffee and sunburn.
It's important to remember, however, that not every exposure to a potential carcinogen will cause cancer: Frequency, intensity and potency matter.
The more you smoke, the more likely you are to get lung cancer, and the more processed meat you eat, the more likely you are to develop colorectal cancer – but the danger is orders of magnitude different.
Worldwide, smoking is associated with about one million cancer deaths annually, and processed meats about 34,000 deaths. Asbestos kills more than 100,000 annually and alcohol causes about 600,000 cancer deaths a year.
Meat, it also needs to be said, has some benefits. It provides nutrition/calories that people need to live, and some essential nutrients such as iron, zinc and vitamin B12.
This is not to suggest that you can't get that nutrition from a diet that does not include meat. Of course you can.
What's interesting, though, is that while there is evidence that eating meat increases the risk of cancer, there is no strong evidence that eschewing meat reduces the risk.
In fact, teasing out which foods do or do not raise or lower cancer risk is incredibly difficult. Those studies you see every week claiming that various substances – blueberries, fish oil, raspberry ketones, or whatever – will magically protect you from cancer have little credence.
At the same time, we have to be careful to also take with a grain of salt the meat industry claims that there is no direct cause-and-effect link between meat (or processed meat) consumption and cancer.
That may be technically true, but there is good, strong evidence of an association, that the more processed meat and red meat you eat, the unhealthier it is. Because, aside from cancer, there is heart disease.
So what's the bottom line?
If you're going to eat meat, it is best to avoid the processed stuff that is smoked, salted, cured and otherwise modified. And, if you're going to eat meat, do so in moderation – as the Canadian Cancer Society recommends, no more than three times a week.
That being said, the occasional indulgence of a BLT, a Schwartz's smoked meat sandwich or a rack of ribs on the barbecue is not going to make a heck of a lot of difference to your risk of developing cancer.
Quote from: Hamilcar on October 26, 2015, 02:34:12 PM
is bad for the planet and for animal welfare,
I don't know... does a cow really care if she's eaten by a pack of wolves rather than humans??
Quote from: viper37 on October 26, 2015, 03:14:13 PM
Quote from: Hamilcar on October 26, 2015, 02:34:12 PM
is bad for the planet and for animal welfare,
I don't know... does a cow really care if she's eaten by a pack of wolves rather than humans??
So you're saying that humans should hold themselves to the same standards as the wolves? :rolleyes:
Quote from: viper37 on October 26, 2015, 03:14:13 PM
Quote from: Hamilcar on October 26, 2015, 02:34:12 PM
is bad for the planet and for animal welfare,
I don't know... does a cow really care if she's eaten by a pack of wolves rather than humans??
Torn apart after being chased down vs. a quick zap to the brain.
So processed meats, smoking, and > 4 drinks of alcohol daily all individually increase your risk of colon cancer by about 20%.
You can lower your lifetime risk of colon cancer by 50% by taking aspirin on a regular basis.
So keep a 1 aspirin to 2 pieces of bacon ratio in your diet, and it'll all balance out. :P