Let’s say you really need to find reliable information
about the best diet for high blood pressure,
or heart disease, or diabetes.
Where do you go?
Do you go to a website sponsored by Big Pharma
that wants to sell you pills to fix your problem?
Or, do you want to treat the cause?
Welcome to the Nutrition Facts Podcast
with the latest peer- reviewed research
on the best ways to eat healthy and live longer.
Today we bring you some important research on processed meat,
which has been classified as a Group 1 carcinogen.
How did the meat industry, government,
and cancer organizations respond to that news?
Here’s our first story.
“It is [perhaps] rare, in the history of nations,
that one finds good reasons to render homage to the
generosity and altruism of governments and those in power,
but the birth of the International Agency for Research on Cancer
(IARC) presents one of those rare occasions.”
It all started with a single letter from a bereaved husband,
relating the suffering of his wife after a cancer diagnosis,
cascading into this open letter calling for governments
to devote half of 1 percent of their military budgets
to fight for life, by attacking one of the greatest plagues
that weigh on humanity.
And 18 months later, the IARC was born
in the World Health Organization.
With what overarching motive? Cancer prevention.
The IARC is best known for its monographs, book-sized reports
evaluating whether or not some suspected carcinogen does
in fact cause cancer.
They are generally accepted as close to a ﬁnal word
as there is on whether or not something is carcinogenic.
And their 114th monograph, published in 2018, was on meat.
After thoroughly reviewing the accumulated scientific literature,
a Working Group of 22 experts from 10 countries,
after considering more than 800 different studies,
concluded their 500-page report by establishing that
something like a burger or pork chop is probably carcinogenic,
probably causes cancer.
But processed meat was placed as a Group 1 carcinogen,
the highest level of certainty, meaning that according
to the best available evidence the consumption
of processed meat causes cancer.
So, that means foods like bacon cause cancer;
ham, hot dogs, breakfast links, lunch meat cause cancer.
But their definition also includes, for example,
turkey deli slices.
Specifically, eating processed meat causes colorectal cancer,
cancers of the colon or rectum, the second most deadly
cancer worldwide, after lung cancer
which is caused largely from smoking.
Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death
here in the United States as well,
and it doesn’t just strike older people.
It’s also a leading cause of cancer and death
from cancer earlier in life as well.
The meat industry wasn’t happy, calling it
a “dramatic and alarmist overreach.”
Speaking of dramatic and alarmist overreach,
one ag group in Italy sent out a press release:
Just say no to terrorism on meat.
The gloves were off.
The meat industry in Canada tried to pressure the government
to cut off funds to the IARC, asking the Health Minister
to pull all funding from the agency
after they dared to question meat.
And the U.S. meat industry did the same thing.
It’s no surprise the IARC is under siege by corporate interests,
trying to challenge their cancer evaluations
on Monsanto’s Roundup pesticide and meat;
trying to discredit the agency and undermine financial support.
Internal documents have revealed that Monsanto scientists,
for example, “casually discussing ‘ghost-writing’
scientific papers and suppressing any science that
conflicts with the company’s assertions of safety.”
The chemical industry has joined the corporate cacophony,
calling the IARC monographs “dubious and misleading.”
These are classic strategies straight out of the
tobacco industry playbook.
“But there is little to suggest that, as a corporate actor,
’Big Tobacco‘ differs fundamentally from
’Big Booze’ or ’Big Food’", for example.
One recurring corporate talking point is that basically
the IARC never met a carcinogen it didn’t like.
But the vast majority end up being categorized as just
possibly carcinogenic, or there really aren’t sufficient data
to make a determination either way.
And look, they only spend time looking at substances
for which there is already an existing body of
scientific literature indicating a degree
of carcinogenic hazard to humans;
so, no wonder many of them end up, indeed, carcinogenic.
How did the IARC respond to all the criticism?
The World Health Organization received a number of queries,
expressions of concern, and requests for clarification
following the publication of their meat and cancer report.
They replied, hey we never told anyone to stop eating
processed meats— your body your choice.
They just indicated that reducing consumption of these
products can reduce the risk of a leading cancer killer.
So hey, you like cancer? You do you.
The IARC is just a research organization that evaluates
the evidence on the causes of cancer;
after that, what you do with that information is up to you.
The American Cancer Society was nice
and clear when it came to alcohol.
When it comes to cancer, it is best not to drink alcohol.
But they got a little more wishy-washy with processed meat,
suggesting people can get away with just limiting their intake.
The European Commission was a little clearer.
To reduce our risk of cancer we should eat plenty of
whole grains, pulses (which are beans, split peas,
chickpeas and lentils), vegetables and fruits,
limit sugary, fatty, salty foods, and straight-up avoid
soda, sausage, and other processed meats.
After all, in answering the question how much meat
is safe to eat, the IARC replied that we don’t yet know
whether a safe level exists, period.
In this next story, I quantify the risks of colon and rectal cancers
from eating foods like bacon, ham, hot dogs, sausage, and lunch meat.
In 2018, arguably the most prestigious cancer research institution
in the world, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC),
within the World Health Organization, published their report
on processed meat, concluding that foods like bacon, ham,
hot dogs, lunch meat, and sausages are cancer causing,
classifying processed meat as a Group 1 carcinogen.
“These findings,” concluded the director of the agency,
“further support current public health recommendations
to limit the intake of meat.”
Critics questioned putting processed meat in the same
carcinogenic classification as asbestos or tobacco.
Or as a pesticide company roughly put it, how can eating
processed meat fall into the same category as mustard gas.
The classifications only relate to the strength of evidence
that the agent causes cancer or not, not how much cancer.
This does not mean that they are all equally dangerous.
It’s safer to eat a sandwich filled with pastrami than plutonium,
even though they are both Group 1 carcinogens;
both substances known to cause cancer in people.
Okay, so just how dangerous is meat?
The relative risk of colorectal cancer was 18 percent
for every 50 grams a day. Okay, so what exactly does that mean?
Well, 50 grams is about one hot dog, or two breakfast links,
or two slices of Canadian bacon or ham.
So, a daily sandwich with one or two slices of baloney
would increase your colorectal cancer risk by 18 percent.
But a half-pound pastrami on rye would
bump it up more like 80 percent.
Okay, but what does the 18 percent increased risk really mean?
One way to look at it is absolute risk versus relative risk.
Assuming that the lifetime risk of colorectal cancer is
about 5 percent (1 in 20), increasing your risk about
20 percent would only bump up your absolute risk
of getting colorectal cancer from 5 percent to 6 percent.
Now, on a population scale, an 18 percent drop in risk
could mean about 25,000 fewer cases of colorectal cancer
every year in the United States, 25,000 fewer families a year
dealing with that diagnosis, if we swapped out the daily
sandwich for hummus or chose veggie dogs instead.
So, it all depends on how you look at it.
Colorectal cancer is our second leading cause of cancer death
for men and women combined, after lung cancer.
So, if you don’t smoke, colon and rectal cancer
may be your greatest cancer nemesis.
But we can drop the risk of getting it by about a fifth
with a single dietary tweak: cutting a serving of
processed meat out of our daily diet.
How does 18 percent increased cancer risk
compare to other risky behavior?
In my testimony before the Dietary Guidelines Scientific Committee,
I made what may sound like a hyperbolic metaphor.
I asked, “We try not to smoke around our kids,
why would we send them to school with a baloney sandwich?”
That is not hyperbole.
According to the Surgeon General, living with a smoker
increases your risk of lung cancer by 15 percent.
So, breathing second-hand smoke day in and day out
increases your risk of lung cancer almost as much as
eating a serving of processed meat day in and day out
increases your risk of colorectal cancer.
The meat industry responded by saying that the risks
and benefits must be considered together before
telling people what to eat or breathe.
Think about all the baloney benefits.
Lunch meat isn’t just about cancer but convenience.
Indeed, processed meat isn’t just about cancer.
An article railing against the World Health Organization’s
“meat terrorism” cited the Global Burden of Disease studies
comparing how many cancer deaths are caused by processed meat
consumption compared to tobacco or alcohol use.
But if you look at the study they’re referencing,
the 30-something thousand deaths attributable to higher
processed meat intake are just the colorectal cancer deaths,
and don’t also include the 100,000 deaths from diabetes
or the 400,000 deaths from heart disease.
So, in actuality, we may be talking a half million deaths
attributable to processed meat.
And it’s not just colon and rectal cancer.
If you look at the science since the IARC decision was published,
processed meat may also increase the risk of
prostate cancer, breast cancer, and pancreatic cancer.
Unfortunately, despite growing public health concerns
about processed meat consumption, there have been no changes
in the amount of processed meat consumed by U.S. adults
over the last 18 years.
Of course, it would have helped if the last
Dietary Guidelines for Americans had happened to mention
that processed meat was a carcinogen.
An explicit and science-based statement on processed meat
in the next Dietary Guidelines would certainly help.
But the scientific committee made no such recommendation.
Sadly, even those diagnosed with colorectal cancer hardly improve
their overall lifestyle after diagnosis, though that may be
because “70 percent of cancer patients had never received
nutrition advice from their [medical] providers
during or after treatment.” That just blows me away.
“Despite the continued obfuscation of the issue
by the meat industry—they learned well from the tobacco merchants—
meat should continue to be a focus of public health action.”
New York City is leading the way, passing legislation
to ban processed meats from school meals.
What a concept, not giving our kids carcinogens.
Meanwhile, the processed meat industry
is trying to reformulate its products.
It’s kind of like in the pharmaceutical area,
where you try to mitigate the potential adverse effects
of one drug by prescribing an additional drug.
Like you could add fiber to hot dogs or something to try
to counterbalance the risk, potentially reducing the cancer load
by changing how it’s processed rather than by
banning processed meat altogether.
We would love it if you could share with us your stories
about reinventing your health through evidence-based nutrition.
Go to nutritionfacts.org/testimonials.
We may share it on our social media to help inspire others.
To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, or studies mentioned here,
please go to the Nutrition Facts Podcast landing page.
There you’ll find all the detailed information you need –
plus, links to all of the sources we cite to each of these topics.
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