How to Be a Conscious Eater

34

PROCESSED MEAT

AND CANCER

H

ot dogs and baseball. Bacon and weekends. Lunch boxes

and ham sandwiches. American culture has a great many

joyous associations with processed meats.

So it was tempting for many of us to look the other way when

the World Health Organization released a whammy of a headline

in 2015, stating that processed meat causes cancer. Colorectal

cancer, specifically. This is a big deal. Rarely do scientists use

the word cause. Normally you hear them cautiously, almost

timidly, state a conclusion as, “Well, perhaps there’s, at most,

a 95 percent probability that Thing 1 might, given the weight of

the evidence, have been associated with Thing 2—though more

research is needed.” When they say “cause,” it means this is one

scientific conclusion worth some serious attention.

The “processed meat” category includes hot dogs, ham,

bacon, sausage, salami, corned beef, beef jerky, canned meat,

and sauces made with those products, like a pork sausage ragù

or bacon salad dressing. “Processing” in this context means

meat that has been treated in order to preserve it over a long

period of time or give it flavor—usually through smoking,

salting, curing, or fermenting in some way. Most commonly,

processed meats come from pork or beef, but the issue applies

to those with a base of other red meats, poultry, meat by-

products, or animal organs. There isn’t the same level of con-

sensus about whether smoked and cured fish products—think

lox on your bagel—count as processed meats in terms of car-

rying the same cancer risk, but it makes sense to treat them

134 how to be a Conscious Eater

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