OK, the A4M (American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine) is a very trustworthy source in my opinion. They are a huge academy of doctors with one focus, to extend the healthy human life span.

Here is their take. I think this puts the issue to rest and exposes the sensationalism of the press. Bacon is in the same category as sunlight and alcohol.

Perhaps no two words together are more likely to set the internet aflame than BACON and CANCER. So when the World Health Organization classified processed meat as a group 1 carcinogen, the same category as tobacco—

Hold on. Let me stop right here. Eating bacon is not as bad as smoking when it comes to cancer. Just no.

The way WHO classifies cancer-causing substances, on the other hand? Maybe a little dangerous to your mental health. Because it is really confusing.

Here’s the deal: The WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer weighs the strength of the scientific evidence that some food, drink, pesticide, smokable plant, whatever is a carcinogen. What it does not do is consider how much that substance actually increases your risk for actually getting cancer—even if it differs by magnitudes of 100.

The scientific evidence linking both processed meat and tobacco to certain types of cancer is strong. In that sense, both are carcinogens. But smoking increases your relative risk of lung cancer by 2,500 percent; eating two slices of bacon a day increases your relative risk for colorectal cancer by 18 percent. Given the frequency of colorectal cancer, that means your risk of getting colorectal cancer over your life goes from about 5 percent to 6 percent and, well, YBMMV. (Your bacon mileage may vary.) “If this is the level of risk you’re running your life on, then you don’t really have much to worry about,” says Alfred Neugut, an oncologist and cancer epidemiologist at Columbia.

The link, though tiny, may start with an iron-based chemical called heme, found in red meat. Heme breaks down into carcinogenic N-nitroso compounds in the digestive tract. Partially on this basis, the IARC also classified unprocessed red a “probable carcinogen.” But processed meat takes it a step further: The nitrates and nitrates used to cure meat—which is to say, preserve it—also turn into N-nitroso compounds. Grilling, frying, or otherwise cooking the meat at high-temperatures may create yet other cancer-causing compounds.

So it makes sense that cutting down on bacon, hot dogs, salami, and ham reduce cancer risk a little. But it’s hardly the big deal that quitting tobacco would be. Connecting the two, as The Guardian does in its headline, “Processed meats rank alongside smoking as cancer causes—WHO,” misrepresents the IARC’s conclusions.

The IARC is an organization of scientists, not policy makers. It publishes monographs to identify hazards and sift them into five piles: group 1 (carcinogenic), group 2A (probably carcinogenic), group 2B (possibly carcinogenic), group 3 (not classifiable), and group 4 (probably not carcinogenic.) Group 1 includes processed meat, and also asbestos. Also alcohol (boo!) and sunlight (yup!). Identifying hazards involves looking at existing data—lots and lots of it—to do essentially a meta-analysis of studies already out there. And it’s relatively objective. “Hazard identification is the process that is the closest to the generation of scientific data,” say Paolo Boffetta, a cancer epidemiologist at Mount Sinai who has served on similar WHO panels. In other words, IARC studies the studies and generates numbers.

What the IARC doesn’t do—and where things get a lot fuzzier—is risk assessment, or figuring out the danger to humans in the real world. Risk assessment involves looking at different scenarios, finding out real-world exposure levels, and weighing possible benefits. (Useful drugs like Tamoxifen—used to treat breast cancer—are also carcinogens, for example.) Those factors can vary from person to person, country to country. “The issue of whether the monograph program should be amended to also include risk assessment has been raised several times, and each time,” says Boffetta, “the conclusion was it should not. It should let national regulatory agencies do the research.” And after 50 years of doing things one way, it’s not like the IARC can just change its mind.

In a way, the IARC’s commitment to, as Boffetta calls it, “an independent list that was not subject to additional pressures,” makes a kind of sense. But science doesn’t happen in a vacuum—just look at the wave of traffic that crashed the IARC’s website after the meat announcement. The agency can maintain that it’s a dispassionate resource for policymakers, but the public is knocking at its door.

In recent years, says Boffetta, the agency has gotten a lot of attention each time it classified something, and those actions often get “overinterpreted.” “X causes cancer” does not mean that X will definitely give you cancer; it just means that X increases your risk of cancer by some amount, and it can vary wildly from a tiny tiny percentage to 25 fold. Does bacon cause cancer? Sure. A little. Will bacon cause cancer in you? Probably not.

Me? I'm not worried about bacon. When I walk down the aisle in the grocery store, the packs of bacon tremble

Bob

Ha ha ha
Good article, not that I was worried.
People have a really hard time with risk assessment. 'Causes Cancer' is such a open ended term it's basically meaningless

For those who like to stay awake at night and worry about these things--

Stuff that causes cancer:
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/cancer%20list.htm

Uh oh.

But wait. It doesn't list CATS and DOGS. Surely harboring a cat or a dog gives you cancer. I think this list is too limited.

All hail Bob the Bacon Slayer!

Also, this entire thing is interpreted against the background of what I'm wondering is the BIGGEST risk of all -- a carb-heavy diet low in nutrient quality. A lot of these food risks might vanish in a person eating low carb, high nutrient.

Also, in grassfed animals, the heat of cooking creates CLA, which makes the food a wash in risk terms. Stockyard animals do not have this quality.

And the population is mostly magnesium deficient. What about people who are not? What does that do to their risk?

We don't know. They aren't studying that.

The more I learn, the more I'm landing at this conclusion, too. A high carb, processed food diet is the 'given' in so many studies. It is practically ignored as a factor in the results. Having crossed the line and become increasingly sick and unhealthy due to my poor diet, I know first hand the healing power of reducing the intake of carbs to a level that my body can tolerate. Sugar was the direct cause of my diabetes symptoms. But it was just a catalyst for frequent UTIs, candida overgrowth, and chronic bronchitis. Sugar + something else = the illness. I'm sure the same thing could be true for many cancers. This story just focuses on the 'something else" that might not actually prove to be a problem if in an environment where intake of sugar is kept within a healthier (much lower) range.

That's the conclusion I have come to also. I no longer have asthma for which I used to take daily medication, my hayfever symptoms have become minimal whereas before they plagued me. I used to get weird rashes and that hasn't happened in a while and my severe dry eye for which I took Restasis has disappeared. It's really a simple formula, remove the bad stuff (sugar/high carbs) and eat only real food, giving the body what it needs to flourish and better health will follow. When the research takes the SAD as a given, you cannot conclude that the same results would occur on a lchf real food diet.

Jean

Everything causes cancer.

And breathing is the number one cause of death. Statistical studies have shown that every human who has ever died spent their entire life breathing. In these kind of statistical studies that look at only one thing, it's conclusive proof that breathing is the number one cause of human death world wide.

Bob

It's simple to reduce the cancer risk of red meat. Just soak the meat in beer.

http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2014...ats-study-says/

Mark Sisson of "Mark's Daily Apple" gave his response to this issue in yesterday's blog post. He also mentioned that marinating meat before grilling neutralizes some of the problem:

"Marinating your red meat using herbs, spices, garlic, onions, citrus, vinegar, wine, and even honey before high-heat cooking can reduce the formation of carcinogens."

Read more: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/what.../#ixzz3pysi1ClT

Since I can't seem to take this thread seriously, adding a new Adele Hite Dietary Drama post with the Steven Colbert Meatocalypse and #smugvegetarian piece.

http://eathropology.com/2015/10/30/...e-but-not-by-me

Bacon is fatal - to pigs.

(sorry, I can't take it seriously anymore either).

Bob

From GrassBasedHealth:

"A stubborn love of bacon just taught more Americans the difference between p values and effect size than 100 stats courses could."
hat tip to Ted Underwood

As usual WHO puts out their political opinion without the science to prove it.