A new report issued by the World Health Organization states that processed meats do indeed cause cancer. As such, the WHO has added bacon, sausage and all other processed meat products to their list of cancer-causing agents.
Research conducted by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) evaluated evidence from the consumption of red meat, and processed meat. Red meat was found to “probably be carcinogenic” while processed meat was given a full red flag for being found to be “carcinogenic to humans”– with each 50 gram serving increasing one’s cancer risk by 18%, supposedly.
One must wonder if this is truth or not. Twenty-two experts from 10 countries met in France recently to “evaluate” the carcinogenic capacity of red meat and processed meat. In the public statement issued by the IARC, no mention of how the information used to come to this conclusion was gathered, nor how the conclusion was drawn. All that is said is that their statement is based on “limited evidence”, as well as that there are varying differences between countries, meat consumption, and consumption outcomes.
It sounds as though these conclusions are based on a set of statistics provided to the experts by the WHO. And as we all know, statistics are easy to manipulate. It could be that countries where folks consume meat that’s been fed a plethora antibiotics and GM-corn and grain have very high cancer rates, while countries who do not consume such meat products have no correlation at all. How likely do you think that is?
Sources: