Now that processed meats have been deemed carcinogenic by the World Health Agency...

[Whoknewitcouldbeso]

Can I ask if you will be allowing your kids to eat sausages, ham, burgers etc? They are also warming about red meat in general so I can no longer feel virtuous when I cook homemade lasagne or shepherds pie.

My son loves sausages, I tend to buy the 98% pork ones but again, now thinking that I'm hurting him by letting him have sausages at all.

What are other people giving their children for dinner? I feel like I'm royally fucking up nowadays although I did make fresh cod goujons in a tempura batter two nights ago and he thought they were great. I must get at least one brownie point for the fish!

Do genetics play a big roll in the causes of death for humans then?

I think so. There is an interplay between genes and environment and food is part of environment.

claig I am disappointed in you. Have you forgotten the Arch Milk Thieves? Surely they were sent by the elite to either a) steal our milk so we would be deprived of its creamy goodness, or b) confuse us into thinking milk is a good thing, a thing we cannot live without, thus increasing sales.

I have no preference as to which conspiracy I should follow, being somewhat allergic to the damn stuff, but I am truly disappointed that you have neglected to include the stripy bastards in your milky discourse.

'Arch Milk Thieves?'

This is a new conspiracy to me. I try to keep up with what the elite are up to and the games their luvvies are instructed to participate in, but this particular one is new to me.

No! They are old, but have not been seen for about 40 years... could they be part of the elite?

Weird! I hadn't imagine the elite as being stripy. Wow!

'could they be part of the elite?'

I very much doubt it. There are very few people who know more about the elite than I do and I have never heard of them. They sound more like puppets.

Sounds like I am clutching at straws then

Not puppets....

'Sounds like I am clutching at straws then'

Yes this is a common scenario when trying to understand what the elite are all about and what exactly is their game, and I don't mean partridge.

Humph! Maybe I'd better Watch Out! You never know when there maybe an... elite about

'Maybe I'd better Watch Out! '

Now you've got the right attitude about them.
If they say something is bad for you, then 9 times out of 10, it's flipping marvellous for you. That's how they operate.

Oh!

I was around in the 70s, I don't remember that, but it's not slick enough for the elite, even in those days. It doesn't look like Oxbridge.

No, not Oxbridge.

Do you really not remember Humphreys? Mmm! Maybe you were tampered with, had some memories removed

Thank you... and goodnight

Can't remember Humphreys. Maybe I was too young then and missed it. Goodnight.

I think the key here is moderation. Most things aren't going to be healthy if eaten to excess. Red meat is find but should only really be eaten once a week in general. It's a source of iron and protein though so has some good qualities too! I give my kids sausages and burgers - and salami and chorizo and all manner of processed meats. I just don't do it all the time. They have loads of veg, fish, pulses etc too xx

What is moderation though, giving sausages once a week will be moderation to some people where as in reality weekly is frequently and is frequently moderation or excess?

I don't think processed meat once a week is frequent at all, even by the amounts given on the cancer research website.

Maybeababybee I thought that was s good idea - go and look at the cancer research website and there is lots of info about meats etc

That is until the bit about if no one smoked against if no one ate red or processed meat there would be 8,800 few cases of cancer per year and that just make me think immediately that I don't want to be one of those cases....

I don't want to get cancer so I want to continue to avoid eating processed meats and eat only a small amount of other types of meat and keep it to 10% of my diet.

So not sure now whether that page was good to look at or not!

I do think a big part of this is the whole feeling like you can control whether or not you get cancer.

You can't, unfortunately. Obviously you can reduce your risk by not smoking, doing exercise, having a healthy diet etc etc. But you can do all these things and still get it. Sometimes it's completely and utterly random, or a genetic thing.

Obviously I try to do as much as possible to limit my risk, but I know that can't control it for the most part, and that does scare me shitless as I have health anxiety.

But I don't want to obsess every time I have a bit of bacon or chorizo. It's no way to live.

But if we know smoking can cause cancer we don't smoke to reduce that risk and if we know processed meat can cause cancer then the less we eat the less the risk. The website actually states the less processed meat we eat the less risk we have. I think it's s risk I want to reduce, like you say without obsessing about a miniscule amount but just avoid then don't worry about the tiny amount here and there you eat.

Ivy I'm afraid I really don't think having the occasional bacon sarnie is going to give me cancer. If I was having one every day, twice a day, then ok maybe, but otherwise no. The research is supportive on this as far as I can tell. It's talking about excessive amounts.

Maybeababybee, I agree the occasional processed meat isn't going to give you cancer.

And you have to take into consideration the initial Relative Risk and the size of the added risk.

If you have a 1 in a million chances of getting something and a behaviour increases that by 5%, then the behaviour affect strength is relatively low, almost negligable.

The difference between the RR and effect size of smoking and eating processed meats is enormous, with processed meat eating risk being relatively very low.

There are an equal number of studies into vegetarian eating habits that show a similar or higher relative risk to processed meat. And the cancer stats for vegetarians are not markedly different from a moderate meat eating diet.

There has to be a wider framework to hang this information in. It is this that the newspapers have neglected to do, making the otherwise perfectly reasonable report and recommendations sound very scary.

In searching for information about meat eating and vegetarian i found this medical research which does indicate that vegetarian diet can give protection against cancer
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23169929

And other studies you would have passed by would have mentioned fibre intake as possibly being key.

Others would have given RR and effects sizes, statement such as The reduced mortality from cancer among those not eating meat is not explained by lifestyle related risk factors, which have a low prevalence among vegetarians. No firm conclusion can be made about deaths from ischaemic heart disease. These data do not justify advice to exclude meat from the diet since there are several attributes of a vegetarian diet apart from not eating meat which might reduce the risk.

And looking at indigenous vegetarian diets Very little is known, however, about the role of the Indian diet in causation of cancer or its role, if any, in prevention of cancer, although more attention is being focused on certain aspects of the Indian diet, such as vegetarianism, spices, and food additives. Of particular interest for cancer prevention is the role of turmeric (curcumin), an ingredient in common Indian curry spice. Researchers also have investigated cumin, chilies, kalakhar, Amrita Bindu, and various plant seeds for their apparent cancer preventive properties.

Put simply, vegetarians are likely to make other lifestyle choices that also reduce RR... it isn't clear it is the absence of meat that is causal. The above studies are a) recent and b) fully peer reviewed.