For the meat-eater…

[KTJ]

from The Washington Post....

Hot dogs, bacon and other processed meats cause cancer,
World Health Organization declares

By PETER WHORISKEY | 6:15AM - Monday, October 26, 2015


A new World Health Organization study found that processed meat like bacon and hot dogs cause cancer.
It is the most prominent group to declare it a cause of the disease, and the U.S. beef industry isn't happy
about it (click on picture to view video clip). — Video: Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post.

A RESEARCH DIVISION of the World Health Organization announced Monday that bacon, sausage and other processed meats cause cancer and that red meat probably does, too.

The report by the influential group stakes out one of the most aggressive stances against meat taken by a major health organization, and it is expected to face stiff criticism in the United States.

The WHO findings were drafted by a panel of 22 international experts who reviewed decades of research on the link between red meat, processed meats and cancer. The panel reviewed animal experiments, studies of human diet and health, and cell processes that could explain how red meat might cause cancer.

But the panel's decision was not unanimous, and by raising lethal concerns about a food that anchors countless American meals, it will be controversial.

The $95 billion U.S. beef industry has been preparing for months to mount a response, and some scientists, including some unaffiliated with the meat industry, have questioned whether the evidence is substantial enough to draw the strong conclusions that the WHO panel did.

In reaching its conclusion, the panel sought to quantify the risks, and compared to carcinogens such as cigarettes, the magnitude of the danger appears small, experts said. The WHO panel cited studies suggesting that an additional 3.5 ounces of red meat everyday raises the risk of colorectal cancer by 17 percent; eating an additional 1.8 ounces of processed meat daily raises the risk by 18 percent, according to the research cited.

“For an individual, the risk of developing colorectal cancer because of their consumption of processed meat remains small, but this risk increases with the amount of meat consumed,” says Kurt Straif, an official with the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer, which produced the report. “In view of the large number of people who consume processed meat, the global impact on cancer incidence is of public health importance.”

About 34,000 cancer deaths a year worldwide are attributable to diets high in processed meats, according to figures cited by the panel.

The research into a possible link between eating red meat and cancer has been the subject of scientific debate for decades, with colorectal cancer being a long-standing area of concern. But by concluding that processed meat causes cancer, and that red meat “probably” causes cancer, the WHO findings go well beyond the tentative associations that some other groups have reported.

The American Cancer Society, for example, notes that many studies have found “a link” between eating red meat and heightened risks of colorectal cancer. But it stops short of telling people that the meats cause cancer. Some diets that have lots of vegetables and fruits and lesser amounts of red and processed meats have been associated with a lower risk of colorectal cancer, the American Cancer Society says, but “it's not exactly clear” which factors of that diet are important.

Likewise, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the U.S. government's advice compendium, encourage the consumption of protein-containing foods such as lean meats as part of a healthy diet. Regarding processed meats, though, the Dietary Guidelines offer a tentative warning: “Moderate evidence suggests an association between the increased intake of processed meats (e.g., franks, sausage, and bacon) and increased risk of colorectal cancer and cardiovascular disease.” The Dietary Guidelines do not assert that processed meats cause cancer.

Officials from the Department of Health and Human Services, which is updating the Dietary Guidelines with the USDA, have not yet reviewed the WHO report, a spokesperson said.

For consumers, the WHO announcement offers scant practical advice even while casting aspersions over a wide array of foods. Red meat includes beef, veal, pork, lamb, mutton and goat. Processed meat includes hot dogs, ham, sausages, corned beef and beef jerky — or any other meat that has been cured, smoked, salted or otherwise changed to enhance flavor or improve preservation.

How much of those is it safe to eat? The group doesn't offer much guidance: “The data available for evaluation did not permit a conclusion about whether a safe level exists.”

Should we be vegetarians? Again, the group does not hazard an answer.

And how exactly does red meat and processed meat cause cancer? The group names a handful of chemicals involved in cooking and processing meat, most of them nearly unpronounceable, and some believed to be carcinogenic.

“But despite the knowledge it is not yet fully understood how cancer risk is increased by red meat or processed meat,” the group wrote.

Despite the voids in the science, the WHO findings might cast a pall over diners and those who serve them.

At The Pig Restaurant on 14th Street NW in Washington, where the menu includes an array of pork products — kielbasa, prosciutto, pork cheek, etc. — a worker sweeping the tables outside encouraged a reporter to look elsewhere for comments about cancer and red meat. Around the corner, outside the Whole Foods grocery, shoppers evinced a weary of fatalism regarding authoritative diet advice.

“It makes some sense,” said Nassrin Farzaneh, a development consultant, carrying a bag out of the store, said of the WHO finding on processed meat. “But they say one thing and then two or three years later they something that contradicts it. It goes on and on.”

“Everything causes cancer,” said Caroline Rourke, an energy policy analyst, also on her way out of the grocery. “Life causes cancer. Who cares what food does? Life is terminal, isn't it?"

In recent years, meat consumption has been the target of multi-faceted social criticism, with debates erupting not just over its role on human health, but the impact of feedlots on the environment and on animal welfare. The public debate over the WHO's findings will probably play out with political lobbying and in marketing messages for consumers.

An industry group, the North American Meat Institute, called the WHO report “dramatic and alarmist over-reach,” and it mocked the panel's previous work for approving a substance found in yoga pants and treating coffee, sunlight and wine as potential cancer hazards.

The WHO panel “says you can enjoy your yoga class, but don't breathe air (Class I carcinogen), sit near a sun-filled window (Class I), apply aloe vera (Class 2B) if you get a sunburn, drink wine or coffee (Class I and Class 2B), or eat grilled food (Class 2A),” said Betsy Booren, vice president of scientific affairs for the group.

“We simply don't think the evidence supports any causal link between any red meat and any type of cancer,” said Shalene McNeill, executive director of human nutrition at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association.

But at its core, the issue revolves around science, and in particular the difficulty that arises whenever scientists try to link any food to a chronic disease.

Experiments to test whether a food causes cancer pose a massive logistical challenge: they require controlling the diets of thousands of test subjects over a course of many years. For example, one group might be assigned to eat lots of meat and another less, or none. But for a variety of reasons involving cost and finding test subjects, such experiments are rarely conducted, and scientists instead often use other less direct methods, known as epidemiological or observational studies, to draw their conclusions.

“I understand that people may be skeptical about this report on meat because the experimental data is not terribly strong,” said Paolo Boffetta, a professor of Tisch Cancer Institute at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine who has served on similar WHO panels. “But in this case the epidemiological evidence is very strong.”

Some scientists, however, have criticized the epidemiological studies for too often reaching “false positives,” that is, concluding that something causes cancer when it doesn't.

“Is everything we eat associated with cancer?” asked a much noted 2012 paper in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

That paper reviewed the academic studies conducted on common cookbook ingredients. Of the 50 ingredients considered, 40 had been studied for their relation to cancer. Individually, most of those studies found that consumption of the food was correlated with cancer. But when the research on any given ingredient was considered collectively, those effects typically shrank or disappeared.

“Many single studies highlight implausibly large effects, even though evidence is weak,” the authors concluded.

Although epidemiological studies were critical in proving the dangers of cigarettes, the magnitude of the reported meat risk is much smaller, and it is hard for scientists to rule out statistical confounding as the cause of the apparent danger.

Moreover, some skeptics noted that two experiments that tested diets with reduced meat consumption, the Polyp Prevention Trial and the Women's Health Initiative, found that people who reduced their meat intake did not appear to have a lower cancer risk. It is possible, though, that the reductions in animal flesh were too small to have an effect.

“It might be a good idea not to be an excessive consumer of meat,” said Jonathan Schoenfeld, the co-author of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition article and an assistant professor in radiation oncology at Harvard Medical School. “But the effects of eating meat may be minimal, if anything.”

• Peter Whoriskey is a staff writer for The Washington Post handling investigations of financial and economic topics.

__________________________________________________________________________

Read more on this topic:

• WHO says hot dogs, bacon cause cancer. Does this mean we should all become vegetarians?

• 95 percent of the world's people may be wrong about salt

• Another food to worry about? Honey not as healthy as we think.

• Why the Bureau of Prisons stripped pork from the menu for federal inmates

• Was it wrong that the government steered people away from whole milk for decades?

• How Coca-Cola has tricked everyone into drinking so much of it

• What Americans do with fish is shocking

• Why Americans are falling out of love with one of their favorite fruits

• Whole milk, butter and eggs are now okay to eat. What's next?

www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/10/26/hot-dogs-bacon-and-other-processed-meats-cause-cancer-world-health-organization-declares

[KTJ]

from Fairfax NZ....

Processed meat, including bacon, linked to cancer
— and red meat is risky too: WHO

By ANGELA CHARLTON | 4:35AM - Tuesday, 27 October 2015


Are you sure you should be eating that? The World Health Organisation warns bacon and other
processed meats could cause cancer. — Photograph: Rom Sumners.

IT'S OFFICIAL: Bacon, ham, hot dogs and other processed meats can lead to colon, stomach and other cancers — and red meat is probably cancer-causing, too.

While doctors in rich countries have long warned against eating too much meat, the World Health Organisation's cancer agency gave the most definitive response yet Monday about its relation to cancer — and put processed meats in the same danger category as smoking or asbestos.

The findings don't say that a slice of salami is as dangerous as a cigarette, but they could weigh on public health policy and recommendations by medical groups amid a growing debate about how much meat is good for us. The meat industry protests the classification, arguing that cancer isn't caused by a specific food but also involves lifestyle and environmental factors.

A group of 22 scientists from the WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France evaluated more than 800 studies from several continents about meat and cancer. The studies looked at more than a dozen types of cancer in populations with diverse diets over the past 20 years.

Based on that evaluation, the IARC classified processed meat as “carcinogenic to humans,” noting links in particular to colon cancer. It said red meat contains some important nutrients, but still labelled it “probably carcinogenic,” with links to colon, prostate and pancreatic cancers.

Ian Johnson, a nutrition researcher with the Institute of Food Research who is unconnected to the IARC findings, cautioned that the classification doesn't reflect “the actual size of the risk,” but said meat consumption is one of many factors contributing to high rates of bowel cancer in the US, western Europe and Australia.

“The mechanism is poorly understood, and the effect is much smaller than, for example, that of cigarette smoking on the risk of lung cancer,” he said.

The cancer agency noted research by the Global Burden of Disease Project suggesting that 34,000 cancer deaths per year worldwide are linked to diets heavy in processed meat — compared with one million deaths a year linked to smoking, 600,000 a year to alcohol consumption and 200,000 a year to air pollution.

The agency said it did not have enough data to define how much processed meat is too dangerous, but said the risk grows with the amount consumed. Analysis of 10 of the studies suggested that a 50-gram portion of processed meat daily increases the risk of colorectal cancer over a lifetime by about 18 percent.

Doctors have warned that a diet loaded with red meat is linked to cancers, including those of the colon and pancreas. The American Cancer Society has long urged people to reduce consumption of red meat and processed meat.

“For an individual, the risk of developing colorectal cancer because of their consumption of processed meat remains small, but this risk increases with the amount of meat consumed,” Dr. Kurt Straif of the IARC said in a statement. “In view of the large number of people who consume processed meat, the global impact on cancer incidence is of public health importance.”

The North American Meat Institute argued in a statement that “cancer is a complex disease not caused by single foods” and stressed the importance of lifestyle and environmental factors.

The researchers defined processed meat as anything transformed to improve its flavour or to preserve it, including sausages, canned meat, beef jerky and anything smoked. They defined red meat as “all types of mammalian muscle meat, such as beef, veal, pork, lamb, mutton, horse and goat.”

The report said grilling, pan-frying or other high-temperature methods of cooking red meat produce the highest amounts of chemicals suspected to cause cancer.

• This story originally came from the Associated Press.

www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/food-wine/73389752

[KTJ]

(click on the picture to read the news story)

[KTJ]

Life causes cancer. Eat more bacon!

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | 2:20PM PDT - Monday, October 26, 2015


I mean, come ON. This is glorious. Now and then and with proper reverence, quality assurance, and skillfully cooked joy? Hell yes.
As a daily staple you furiously can't live without? Something's amiss.

YOU HEAR THAT? That cacophonous wail, the mad thumping of ten million gristle-encrusted chests from here to the American Cancer Society?

Fear not. It's just the howl of America's army of baffled paleo bros, meat fetishists, furious beef industry execs and bacon-obsessed dudes with 10 pounds of mysterious blockage where their colons used to be, all protesting, somewhat lethargically and with a weird cramp in their small intestine, the World Health Organization's latest proclamation. Did you hear?

That's right: Red meat probably causes cancer. More directly: processed meats — bacon, sausage, smoked turkey, hot dogs, McNuggets, that over-salted gristle in your fave Chinese takeout — most definitely cause cancer, to the point where the WHO has officially placed these tasty carcinogens in the same category as smoking, arsenic, and alcohol.


You hear that? That cacophonous wail, the mad thumping
of ten million gristle-encrusted chests from here to the
American Cancer Society?

And lo, the terrorists win again.

You're surprised? You're not surprised. Nitrates have been bad news forever. Ditto excessive salt, “smoke flavoring”, preservatives, curing and charring and soaking that massive pork loin in brine to bring out all the delicious death. There's a reason any healthy human on earth turns a sickly shade of pale after ingesting a triple bacon Whopper.

Not that you hear much about it. Like Big Tobacco before it, Big Meat has successfully suppressed the obvious for years, by way of relentless marketing, ruthless lobbying and front-loading the USDA with pro-beef cronies. Ever wonder why bacon has gone viral a hundred times over in recent years, all of a sudden, spawning all manner of absurd trend, nasty food product, ridiculous YouTube channel? Ever seen an industrial hog farm tailing pond? Exactly! (see video clip below.)



Does this sound familiar? “We simply don't think the evidence supports any casual link between any red meat and any type of cancer.”

That's Shalene McNeil, a top “nutritionist” at the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, responding to the WHO report, giving her best impression of an RJ Reynolds tobacco executive. “Also, stabbing myself in the eye with this fork doesn't hurt at all,” she did not add, stabbing herself in the eye with a fork, and screaming.

Thing is, it requires a special combination of willful ignorance and lazy death wish to reject everything that science, common sense and your body already tell you, every day: Smoking is dumb. Sodas are terrible. Texting while driving is suicidal. Guns bring nothing of value to the human experience. Processed foods are deadly. And processed meats are deadlier still.

Denial ain't just a river in Egypt, Mr. Clogged Colon.


Goes well with bourbon. And slight amount of dilirium and madness.

Look, don't get crazy. They're not saying eating bacon is exactly the same as smoking, in terms of your imminent doom, yellow teeth and how awful you smell to your lover. The new classification merely places meat in the same category of carcinogen, not the same level of risk.

Translation: While eating excessive amounts of processed meats will surely double or triple your risk for colon, stomach, rectal and many other very unpleasant cancers, smoking, next to gun ownership, dating a Kardashian and voting Republican, remains one of the most insane things you can do to your body, by a large factor.

But really, so what? Life is full of death, right? Everything you love will kill you eventually, say the clever pessimists of the world. In short: Bacon is delicious and hipster-riffic and we’re all gonna die anyway, so who cares?

Well, sure. Many things can, in fact, make you very sick indeed: Air pollution. Laundry detergent. Coca-Cola. Computer screens. Refined sugar. Airports. Lack of sex. Too much sex. Organized religion. Guilt and shame, stress and anxiety, heroin and cell phones and working the graveyard shift. Politics. Hair products. Tight underwear. Gravity.

Who can say exactly what might trigger your body's latent cancer cells into more deadly action? Who knows why some people get sick and some don't, despite awful diets, cruelty to animals, a lifetime of smoking and drinking and skipping the salad? Might as well live a little, right? Pass the bacon donuts!

Nice try. Nice cop-out. Also exactly the intellectually lazy, spiritually numb reaction the meat industry (and Big Pharma, and McDonald's, et al) is praying you'll have.


Delicious. Enticing. Not the slightest bit essential to anything truly worthwhile, once you see it for what it actually is. But still!


It's all in how you revere, appreciate, discern, both in what you put into the body, and what effect it all has on the world
around you. Also: grass-fed rib-eyes, once every couple months or so. Because holy god.

Here’s the thing: Fatalism is easy. Pretending it's all just another case of science, or the government, or Big Kale trying to take away our “freedoms” and pleasures is also easy (and also sort of idiotic). Life is so crammed with pleasures, and Americans are so wildly over-entitled already, it's downright absurd. As always, it's discernment that's hard.

Do not misunderstand. Bacon is awesome. Context is key. It's vital to properly savor and appreciate the bounty of this life, with respect and balance and a Bi-Rite whoopee pie with well-aged bourbon, now and then. Hell, I live mere blocks from the finest heritage pork chop on the west coast (Nopa), and arguably the finest, Bourdain-approved BBQ in the City (4505 Burgers & BBQ). Once a month or so, you'll find me in a happy, carcinogenic swoon at one or the other. I mean, good lord.

But is it all really just about forced moderation, or adhering to some strict diet you know you're “supposed” to follow, but resent the hell out of? Or is it more about trying to recognize the continuum of experience? That is to say, cultivating a stable undercurrent of reverence for life's staggering surfeit, so you automatically choose, evermore wisely and sans resentment, the kinds of things you want to bring into your body, your heart, your life?

Put another way: It ain't about bacon. Bacon is fun and absurd and small and meaningless.

It's about — isn't it always? — the larger filter, the overall approach your life, you body, your world: What brings more vitality, health, true sustenance? What are those foods, experiences, practices and people, jobs and projects that genuinely add to the overall wellspring of health and love?

Chances are, it ain't junk food. It ain't enormous piles of obvious carcinogens, every day. That's not where you find meaning, truth, God. Or rather, if it is, perhaps the threat of deadly illness isn't your biggest concern.


Percentages mean little until you begin to feel
that odd blockage in your colon after years
of eating processed meats.

• Email: Mark Morford

• Mark Morford on Twitter and Facebook.

blog.sfgate.com/morford/2015/10/26/life-causes-cancer-eat-more-bacon

[pim]

So the pork sausages we have planned for tonight's dinner are gonna kill us? Damn!!!

[jody]

This is one of the reasons I have given up red meat and processed meat. They have proof now but will people listen! Some will but there will be still many who won't.

I am down to only eating free range chicken or small fish. I am healthier, I am happier.

[KTJ]

from The Washington Post....

The WHO warns that processed meat causes cancer.
These countries should be worried most.

By RICK NOACK | 5:00AM - Tuesday, October 27, 2015


Processed meats. — Photograph: Julie Wan/The Washington Post.

LONDON — On Monday, a research division of the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that bacon, sausage and other processed meats cause cancer, and that red meat probably does, too.

In Britain — which is proud of its bacon and meat-heavy breakfast — the news was quickly debated nationally. Reporters swarmed the streets to feel the nation's mood. Meanwhile, experts attacked the report, saying it was flawed.

Speaking to British newspaper The Telegraph, Ian Johnson, an emeritus fellow at the Institute of Food Research in the U.K., said: “It is certainly very inappropriate to suggest that any adverse effect of bacon and sausages on the risk of bowel cancer is comparable to the dangers of tobacco smoke, which is loaded with known chemical carcinogens and increases the risk of lung cancer in cigarette smokers by around 20 fold.”

There is a reason for the agitation: Europeans consume a lot of pork — only the Chinese probably eat more. Americans are ranked fifth in the world, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.



But when it comes to beef and veal, the ranking looks a lot different.

The five countries where consumption of beef and veal in kilogram per capita is highest are in fact Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, the United States and Australia.

On average, Europeans consume a bit more than 10 kilograms of beef and veal per capita annually.



• Rick Noack writes about foreign affairs for The Washington Post and is based in Europe.

__________________________________________________________________________

Read more on this topic:

• Hot dogs, bacon and other processed meats cause cancer, World Health Organization declares

www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/10/27/chart-the-who-warns-that-processed-meat-causes-cancer-these-countries-should-be-worried-most

[KTJ]

from The Washington Post....

The science against meat: A look at 5 key studies about cancer risk

By ARIANA EUNJUNG CHA | 10:32AM - Tuesday, October 27, 2015


Process meats. — Photograph: Greg Powers/The Washington Post.

IN making its decision to declare bacon, sausages and other processed meats carcinogens, the World Health Organization's research arm looked at 800 epidemiological studies from numerous countries with diverse ethnicities and diets. They gave the greatest weight to studies done in the general population, had a controlled design, large sample sizes, and/or used quantitative dietary data culled from questionnaires.

Below is a look at five of the key studies cited by the scientists in their announcement published in The Lancet Oncology on Monday. Most of the supporting studies focused on colorectal cancer but the panel said it also looked at data for 15 other types of cancer and found positive associations for red meat and pancreatic and prostate cancer and of processed meat for cancer of the stomach.

1. Journal of the National Cancer Institute, June 2005: “Meat, fish, and colorectal cancer risk: the European Prospective Investigation into cancer and nutrition”.

Location: 10 European countries.

Participants: 478,040 men and women from who were free of cancer at enrollment between 1992 and 1998.

Researchers collected information about on diet and lifestyle was collected at the beginning and followed up with them a few years later. (The mean follow-up was at 4.8 years). At that time, they documented 1,329 colorectal cancers.

After adjusting for age, sex, and a number of other factors they found that the more participants ate red and processed meat, the higher their colorectal cancer risk. They found the inverse for fish intake but no impact for poultry intake.

They calculated that the absolute risk of development of colorectal cancer within 10 years for a study subject aged 50 years was 1.71 percent for the highest category of red and processed meat intake (greater than 160 grams a day), and 1.28 percent for the lowest category of intake (less than 20 grams a day). For fish, they found the absolute risk to be 1.86 percent for subjects in the lowest category of fish intake (less than 10 grams a day) and 1.28 percent for subjects in the highest category of fish intake (more than 80 grams a day).

Note that the risks are the same for those who eat a small amount of meat and those who have the highest intake of fish.

2. Cancer Letters, December 2006: “The relationship between the consumption of meat, fat, and coffee and the risk of colon cancer: A prospective study in Japan”.

Location: Japan.

Participants: 13,894 men and 16,327 women who were followed from 1992 to 2000.

The researchers found that in men, high consumption of processed meat increased the risk of colon cancer comparison with low consumption. Interestingly, women who are daily coffee drinkers had a reduced risk in comparison with individuals who never or rarely drank coffee.

3. Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers Prev, September 2004: “Red meat, chicken, and fish consumption and risk of colorectal cancer”.

Location: Australia.

Participants: 37,112 residents of Melbourne recruited from 1990 to 1994.

Researchers studied the study subjects' diets with a food frequency questionnaire and categorized the frequency of fresh red meat, processed meat, chicken, and fish consumption into approximate quartiles. They obtained information about cases of colon or rectal cancer via the state cancer registry and identified 283 colon cancers and 169 rectal cancers in an average of 9 years of follow-up.

For rectal cancer, those in the highest quartile of consumption of fresh red meat and processed meat had an elevated risk. They also had an elevated risk for colon cancer but it was slightly less. Chicken consumption was weakly negatively associated with colorectal cancer but fish consumption was not. The researchers concluded that consumption of fresh red meat and processed meat seemed to be associated with an increased risk of rectal cancer but consumption of chicken and fish did not increase risk.

4. PLOS ONE, August 2015: “Processed and Unprocessed Red Meat and Risk of Colorectal Cancer: Analysis by Tumor Location and Modification by Time”.

Location: United States.

Participants: 87,108 women from the Nurses' Health Study in 1980–2010 and 47,389 men from the Health Professionals Follow-up Study in 1986–2010.

Participants reported their dietary intake repeatedly and were followed up for over two decades. In the combined group, researchers found 2,731 colorectal cancer cases. Processed meat intake was positively associated with risk of colorectal cancer, particularly distal cancer, but there was little evidence that higher intake of unprocessed red meat substantially increased risk.

5. Cancer Research, March 2010: “A Large Prospective Study of Meat Consumption and Colorectal Cancer Risk: An Investigation of Potential Mechanisms Underlying this Association”.

Location: United States.

Participants: 300,948 men and women.

During seven years of follow-up, the researchers found 2,719 colorectal cancer cases. This study focused on the mechanisms for the link between high consumption and risk by using a detailed questionnaire on meat type and meat cooking methods linked to databases for estimating intake of mutagens formed in meats cooked at high temperatures. Researchers confirmed a positive association for red and processed meat intake and colorectal cancer and theorized that heme iron, nitrate/nitrite, and heterocyclic amines that gets into the body from the meat may explain these associations.

• Ariana Eunjung Cha is a national reporter. She has previously served as The Washington Post's bureau chief in Shanghai and San Francisco, and as a correspondent in Baghdad.

__________________________________________________________________________

Read more on this topic:

• WHO says hot dogs, bacon cause cancer. Does this mean we should all be vegetarians?

• There are roughly 480 things the WHO says might cause cancer

• Cutting sugar from kids' diets appears to have a beneficial effect in just days

www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2015/10/27/the-science-against-meat-a-look-at-5-key-studies-about-cancer-risk

[KTJ]

[KTJ]