To not have known that deli chicken is a level 1 carcinogen

[nevertearusapart]

Am feeling fairly stupid about this but only just realised that deli chicken / turkey are considered level 1 carcinogenic processed meats so linked to negative health effects incl. cancer. The examples used are typically ham, sausages, bacon, salami etc so I just assumed red meat for some reason. The deli chicken that we eat was labelled 100% natural and only contained chicken, potato starch, salt and vinegar but it now looks like it’s almost bad as the rest.
Does everyone know things like this and what do people put in kids lunches? (And yes I know it’s all about daily / excessive consumption etc etc)

Some pre cooked chicken seems to better than others. If you read the labels it’s helpful. I know it’s expensive but the M&S cooked chicken is nice and just got added dextrose. Yes its sugar. Think they put it on the skin to make it brown. But I don’t eat the skin. It is v hard though. We’ve stopped ham and sausages. We still eat lean red meat for iron. But just once a week.

Couldn’t agree more!

The stress of worrying about all of this to the point you’re scanning everything you eat through an app will be probably do more damage than eating the chicken sandwich.

People want to believe it's more in their control than it is

Exactly this. People worry about eating a bit of salami, using sunscreen or coming into contact with a vape. We’re surrounded by carcinogenic exhaust fumes every day. We consume microplastics every day. We orbit a gigantic carcinogenic ball of gas. There’s no escaping it.

Cancer is a lottery. It’s an error in your DNA. Your DNA is replicating constantly and inevitably things get translated incorrectly for any number of reasons. Our bodies have systems in place to deal with this, but sometimes those systems fail. Often for reasons way beyond your control.

Eating healthily is always a good idea, but this level of stress about food is not. And I’m tired of the smug speculation around cancer patients’ diets I see over and over again. Maybe leave the speculation to their oncologists, eh?

I don't think people are stressing. Just avoiding as much of the chemical crap as possible that is being put into our food.

I think it pays to wise up.

What goes into our food is changing all the time, and the young generation will have been eating it for the longest. Our mothers, their smoking and meat eating habits, will not have been layered on top with a childhood full of absolute chemical soup like our children are faced with.
In fact, our mothers probably had a pretty good launchpad of undoctored food sources as children if they were born pre- 1950. It may be why they are all living so long right now.
Today's children and teens will be the first generation where life expectancy actually begins to fall for the first time - ever.

@specialsauce

Our mothers, their smoking and meat eating habits, will not have been layered on top with a childhood full of absolute chemical soup like our children are faced with.
In fact, our mothers probably had a pretty good launchpad of undoctored food sources as children if they were born pre- 1950. It may be why they are all living so long right now.

I have no idea what this means. But it sounds a lot like stressing to me.

It's not tricky to understand.

and I'm not stressed at all 😄

Have you never heard of Spam or corned beef? DIY cured meats in wartime and rationing? The fillers and additives in medicines before they were regulated? The shite they used to bulk up things like flour and confectionary? As PPs have said, processed foods aren’t a new thing unique to our generation.

@Mabs49 thats the point of the thread, we also had reduced ham, sausages etc and eaten more ‘good quality / natural’ packaged chicken. It looks like it’s all much of a muchness, regardless of whether preserved with salt or artificial nitrates.

The problem with the WHO cancer research classifications is that "carcinogenic" refers only to whether or not a given foodstuff has a proven/probable/otherwise link to cancer, but says nothing at all about the probability of consumption leading to it. So different foodstuffs may bear the same label, but one will carry an actual quantifiable risk and another will be almost completely harmless.

Your diet sounds just fine OP and reasonably 5⁵. Don't think there a reason to worry if you simply carry on as you were.

How simple life used to be. In my grandparents time they ate what they wanted to, smoked (my GM was a chain smoker), ate meat every day and lived their lives without all this stress about what they should/shouldn't eat, then popped off in their mid-80s. Ditto my parents, without the smoking, and they died in their late 80s.

I'm sure some of these young people who spend so much time researching everything they eat and drink and worrying about absolutely everything are at risk of getting cancer and other diseases via their stress levels.

No they aren't new, but they are now prevalent, whereas before they were unique.

So unique that you can only name 2 highly processed foodstuffs pre-1950's.

. . . and we weren't discussing medicines. That's a different subject entirely. Otherwise I could bring breathing benzene into it, as well as the toxic homes exuding chemicals from all the plastic furniture, glues, fillers, household cleaners etc.

Let's not go there shall we.

Life is more toxic than it has ever been.

There's simply no denying it.

and I'll be damned if I'll add to it by eating shitty cheap chicken that's got a detergent added to it with a COSHH sheet that reads like a hazardous waste profile.

UPF = danger ⚠️ is just the latest obsession. People have known about this in some shape or form for ages. It's been repackaged as a new thing for pop scientists to write acres of copy about.

There'll be some other scare to worry about next week for more click baity articles.

A little learning is a dangerous thing but, confusingly:-

Everything in moderation.

Pasta? 🤷🏼‍♀️

I don't think it's a new scare, I'd say it's fact and given how many physical and mental problems people have I'm sure it's a huge factor. Each generation gets sicker than the one before. Problem is we can't live without it now.

@RickyGervaislovesdogs yep, I see a lot of pasta in our future 🍝

Isn’t deli chicken the extruded stuff that resembles white salami, rather than recently cooked whole chicken that has then been sliced?

Also as PPs have said, level 1 is about the existence of the hazard, not the level of the risk.

@Gremlinsateit it looks like all chicken / turkey that is not home cooked afaik

I just assume I’m going to die at some point, and that it’s probably going to be the drugs and alcohol I’ve consumed over my lifetime which is the influencing factor in when rather than the pre-cooked roast chicken currently sitting in my fridge. I’m not particularly fussed whether I get 50 years out of life, or 104. It’s not as though I’ll remember missing out if it turns out to be the former.

Boil in a plastic bag? In a phthalate non stick pan 😅 just like those cooking their chicken breast in a non stick toxic coated air fryer instead of purchasing deli chicken?

OP I gave up ham for deli chicken 😬

None of it is great, is it. It's quite difficult, especially ona budget or if you have little time or disability that make cooking especially difficult.

@Sparrowsname me too and it was a conscious choice for the kids health!

What’s frustrating is that DH has never looked up a food label. The whole mental load of food choices falls on me, always. So when I do ‘miss’ or misunderstand something like this, there’s no backup. And yes, I know this is also the case for single parent families but argh!

The M&S chicken is also a better texture and I couldn't see anything bad in the ingredients. This is the 3 for £8 packs or 2 for £7 packs, chunkier slices which are the nice ones. The wafer thin version seems to have additives though

I read that the only effective way to lower the amount of micro plastics in your body was physically remove them by blood donation.
I would think that would increase the number of people donating blood, but perhaps deter people from accepting blood when needed. Perhaps that’s why it’s not widely discussed.

Mum had colon cancer way back she was told no processed meats. No red meat and “nothing from a supermarket “.
The latter she trots out as she mainlines mini magnums 🫢

Age group 20–29 yearsFor both sexes combined, CRC incidence increased from 0.8 to 2.3 cases per 100 000 persons between 1990 and 2016. This increase was 1.7% per year between 1990 and 2004, and then rose to 7.9% increase per year between 2004 and 2016 (figure 2).

It's true its on the increase, but it is still rare.

Everything causes cancer. I never worry about stuff like this

Thank you. This, x 100.