What did the Mets fan say to the Royals fan eating a hot dog?
“I heard those those cause cancer.”
The World Health Organization came out with a report Oct. 26 that now classifies processed meat, such as hot dogs and bacon, as “carcinogenic to humans.” And what about unprocessed meat like steak? “Probably carcinogenic,” too.
Carcinogenic is just a fancy way to say cancer-causing — you know, like smoking cigarettes. This comes as a huge shock not only to baseball fans, who are expected to eat 21,357,361 hot dogs this season according to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council, but also to the millions around the word that eat a couple pieces of sausage in the morning. The WHO says that doing just that is enough to increase your chance of developing colorectal cancer by 18 percent. This sounds like a huge risk to be bringing home with your bacon.
This report caused so much alarm that the WHO had to release a second statement on Thursday to clarify and calm the public down. It basically said there’s no need to panic, since this information isn’t new. In 2002, the WHO recommended people to limit their consumption of processed meat, and according to them, this most recent report just confirms that. At the bottom of the statement is the spokesman’s contact information for anyone who still has questions. I sure feel bad for that guy.
I, for one, still have a lot of questions. To recap: we were first told to not eat too much processed meat, then we were explicitly told that even a small amount of processed meat causes cancer and now we’re being told not to worry. So, what do we think?
There are two very new, very scary details that stand out in this report. The first is that processed meat is now classified as a “Group 1” carcinogen, the same category as cigarettes. The second is that 50 grams, or two pieces of sausage a day, increases your risk of cancer by 18 percent. The reason these facts sound so terrifying is that they came to us with no other background information. For starters, being in this group means that in epidemiologic studies, which look at samples of people, show the consumption of processed meats has been linked to cases of cancer. It does not mean that 90 percent of this colorectal cancer cases are linked to sausage in the same way that 90 percent of lung cancer cases are linked to cigarettes. As for the 18 percent — this statistic is relative, not absolute. It doesn’t mean that eating two pieces of bacon a day magically boosts your risk for cancer up by 18 percent. Rather, the 18 percent is factored into to what your risk was before. So, for example, if your risk for developing colorectal cancer was 10 percent, and then you started eating 50 grams of processed meat a day, your risk would increase by 18 percent of 10, or 1.8 percent.
Still have questions? Me too.
The fact is, no one really has all the answers, something neither the WHO nor the news is going to outwardly say. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s chief medical correspondent, did his best to answer some viewers’ questions in an article Tuesday. None of the questions asked truly allowed for a straight answer to be given. His response is telling: “Everything causes cancer! Why take this seriously?” I can picture Gupta chuckling and shaking his head, trying to figure out how to be exceptionally vague while still giving a somewhat satisfying response. He gives it a shot by first admitting that “It is true that we are exposed to all sorts of different carcinogens, even before we are born.” Hm. He then goes on to mention how interesting the parameters of the study were. Double hm.
This viewer’s question, as silly as it may sound, gives us an opportunity to open up an important discussion. The fact is, we don’t know exactly what causes cancer. If we did, there would be a cure. There are people who smoke a pack of cigarettes and eat a pound of bacon a day and live to be 100. There are factors beyond our control and components of the disease and how it propagates that we don’t understand. It’s good to stay up to date on medical findings such as these, and maybe tweak your lifestyle as you see fit. But the key to a healthy lifestyle is moderation, balance and maybe just a little fewer frankfurters.
