I Bacon Safe To Eat Daily?

[lucylocket61]

I see often people recommending bacon and eggs for breakfast. Wasnt there some research highlighted on here recently which showed that processed meats are bad for us more than once or twice a weeks?

r was that dodgy research?

 

[bulkbiker]

They are almost all based on the IARC ( a sub section of the WHO) who recently ,three years after the initial press release, finally published the full version of their report here

http://publications.iarc.fr/Book-An...ks-To-Humans/Red-Meat-And-Processed-Meat-2018

You can download the pdf and its quite long. There is however this proviso at the very start.

"The term ‘carcinogenic risk’ in the IARC Monographs series is taken to mean that an agent is capable of causing cancer. "

So "capable" of causing cancer does not mean it will cause cancer.

I will freely admit I haven't read the report yet but anecdotally I think there are a number of confounders.
Possibly people who eat a lot of processed meat ( which so far as I know includes not only bacon but also artisan salami as well as luncheon meat and the US meat products that look like pink slime) also tend to smoke more and drink more and perhaps may be a pound or two heavier than the "norm". That may be a contributor.

I will try and read it but it is over 500 pages....

For the red meat part Dr Georgia Ede did a debunk video which is here..

 

[britishpub]

was that dodgy research?

No, cheap processed meats contain a lot of **** that is unhealthy for you.

Come to think of it, cheap processed anything is definatley unhealthy for you.

 

[Boo1979]

I only occasionally eat processed meat and only ever buy nitrate / nitrite free bacon etc due to the health concerns
I buy this brand http://www.finnebrogue.com/naked/

 

[britishpub]

‘carcinogenic risk’

Risk, is a very misunderstood term, and often when used in academic studies used incorrectly (as you pointed out)

The "risk" posed by processed meats will of course vary hugely depending on how the meat was processed. The traditional methods used to process meats/fish will pose a far lower risk than the modern mass production methods used to produce large quantities of cheap product.

I don't think many of us will need a 500 page report to tell us that cheap bacon sold for £1 a pack, that reduces in size by 50% when cooked and is covered in strange white stuff is more harmful for us than bacon that costs five times as much, remains the same size after cooking and looks nice on the plate.

 

[lucylocket61]

cheap is all i can afford, so it looks like the bacon is off the menu.

 

[bulkbiker]

Skimmed through the first hundred or so pages and the whole study appears to be based on food surveys of various types that have been carried out for other reasons. As we all know food surveys are notoriously unreliable then drawing any firm conclusions from them is in my view ridiculous.
Bacon will be on my menu for a long time as will salami and other processed meats from France, Italy etc..

 

[Dark Horse]

I see often people recommending bacon and eggs for breakfast. Wasnt there some research highlighted on here recently which showed that processed meats are bad for us more than once or twice a weeks?

r was that dodgy research?

The WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has classified processed meat as carcinogenic to humans. Smoking and asbestos have also been classified by the WHO as carcinogenic. Some people misunderstood this classification and thought that the WHO were saying that bacon was as dangerous as cigarettes, which they weren't. The classification relates to the reliability of the evidence, it doesn't say anything about the size of the risk.

The WHO explained it thus:-

Processed meat was classified as carcinogenic to humans (Group 1). Tobacco smoking and asbestos are also both classified as carcinogenic to humans (Group 1). Does it mean that consumption of processed meat is as carcinogenic as tobacco smoking and asbestos?
No, processed meat has been classified in the same category as causes of cancer such as tobacco smoking and asbestos (IARC Group 1, carcinogenic to humans), but this does NOT mean that they are all equally dangerous. The IARC classifications describe the strength of the scientific evidence about an agent being a cause of cancer, rather than assessing the level of risk.
http://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/
​

They go on to explain the risk:-

The consumption of processed meat was associated with small increases in the risk of cancer in the studies reviewed. In those studies, the risk generally increased with the amount of meat consumed. An analysis of data from 10 studies estimated that every 50 gram portion of processed meat eaten daily increases the risk of colorectal cancer by about 18%.
​

18% is the relative risk compared to the 'normal' background level of colorectal cancer, it is not the absolute risk which is much smaller.

There is a good analysis, including the way it was reported in the media here:- https://www.nhs.uk/news/cancer/processed-meat-causes-cancer-warns-who-report/

 

[Mbaker]

If a person had a 5 in 5000 chance of getting colorectal cancer then eating 50 grams per day of bacon over a lifetime increased the risk to 6 in 5000 (If you believe the methodology to get this miniscule increase). The publishers were "fraudulent" as they presented the risk off the top of my head at 18%, by some weird calculations (to scare, I think called relative risk). There are plenty of views on the net about this. We do by the nitrate free bacon at home, which if anything is a problem this could be it, nothing to do with the bacon per se just the process used during curing.

Today was one of the 3 days I have 2 meals a day, I happily tucked into 5 bacon slices and the previous bad food of 2 fried eggs and around a quarter of a plate of scrambled eggs also.

I just find it bizarre that they are never about to prove to a science level these types of claims, yet they get stickability. On the contrary the pathway that starchy carbs turn to sugar is not disputed and proven, yet these similar people keep quiet about a large baked potato with 19 teaspoons of sugar equivalent.

 

[bulkbiker]

This bit from page 495 is more interesting

"Overall, the mechanistic evidence for carcinogenicity is strong for red meat, based primarily on studies of colonic preneoplastic lesions in humans and rodents, and the considerable evidence concerning haem iron, HAAs, and NOCs in humans and rodents. Fewer data in humans, especially from intervention studies, are available for processed meat than for red meat.
The mechanistic evidence for carcinogenicity is moderate for processed meat, based primarily on studies of colonic preneoplastic lesions in humans and rodents, human and other experimental evidence for NOCs, and studies of haem iron in rodents."

Having watch Dr Ede's taking apart the study on red meat and the paucity of evidence for this "strong" evidence to find that the evidence for processed meat is only "moderate" is quite revealing... This was certainly not the headlines that came out three years ago when the abstract was published. It would appear to be saying "steak bad bacon less bad".

As I said above I'm going to carry on enjoying both (probably to excess) ...

 

[britishpub]

My most recent Colonoscopy (6 months ago) appeared to show no ill effects from my consumption of bacon and steak

 

[mojo37]

cheap is all i can afford, so it looks like the bacon is off the menu.

I buy the good stuff, more expensive of course but I eat less of it and slice for slice it's better value also it tastes better and doesn't shrink to half the size it once was

 

[KK123]

Just about every person on this site is very careful about what they eat and choosing things that they know are good for their circumstances. I've never been one for eating anything to an excessive degree but I ain't giving up bacon....so there!!!!

 

[Circuspony]

I tend to think most people on this site have a higher risk of dying early through not managing their condition vs dying through over eating bacon!

 

[lucylocket61]

thank you all.

I take the point about having one rasher of the good stuff v more of the not so good stuff and will do some sums.

I had a couple of non-cancerous polyps removed after a colorectal investigation two years ago, and at that point had hardly eaten bacon or red meat during my lifetime.

 

[Mr_Pot]

The publishers were "fraudulent" as they presented the risk off the top of my head at 18%, by some weird calculations (to scare, I think called relative risk).

The calculation is not really weird, going from 5 to 6 is about an 18% increase. However, as you say this is a relative risk and rather meaningless in deciding whether to eat processed meat or not.

 

[lucylocket61]

according to this site: https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/he...cer-type/bowel-cancer/incidence#heading-Seven

my risk of getting bowel cancer in my lifetime is 6%. I lack the maths skills to work out what 18% of 6% is to work out the additional perceived risk if I eat bacon or ham etc every day.

 

[bulkbiker]

according to this site: https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/he...cer-type/bowel-cancer/incidence#heading-Seven

my risk of getting bowel cancer in my lifetime is 6%. I lack the maths skills to work out what 18% of 6% is to work out the additional perceived risk if I eat bacon or ham etc every day.

Negligible but it is a binary thing... you ether get it or you don''t.. the percentages of likelihood don't really mean much.

 

[porl69]

Even if it isn't there is ZERO chance of me giving up bacon.......EVER
BUT that's just me

 

[Mr_Pot]

according to this site: https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/he...cer-type/bowel-cancer/incidence#heading-Seven

my risk of getting bowel cancer in my lifetime is 6%. I lack the maths skills to work out what 18% of 6% is to work out the additional perceived risk if I eat bacon or ham etc every day.

18% of 6% is a 1% increase to 7% which incidentally is the risk males have anyway.