Sinister sausage - will you still eat processed meat?

Chicken is safe
Even though I know it's white meat

Though I just knew pork was dangerous,
Not beef and mutton too

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21829233-200-dont-take-life-sitting-down/

Sitting, on the other hand, appears to be positively awful for you, and no amount of time on the treadmill changes that. So scientific advancement, which created the job of sitting in front of a computer, has now concluded that it's killing us.

One can obsess too much over these things.

A recent study (published yesterday) that took place over 16 years and involved around 5,000 came to a rather different conclusion. The conclusion of the study is that "Sitting time was not associated with all-cause mortality risk. The results of this study suggest that policy makers and clinicians should be cautious about placing emphasis on sitting behaviour as a risk factor for mortality that is distinct from the effect of physical activity"

http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2015/10/09/ije.dyv191.full


As they say in this recent study, "Further research is needed to address the uncertainties regarding the true nature of the exposure and the biological mechanisms that underpin previously observed associations between sitting time and health outcomes." So I guess things aren't so clear in regards to sitting.

Interesting

I will now sit with slightly less guilt!

One hypothesised reason for this study coming to a different result was, "people working in London are relatively active compared with people living and working in other geographical areas of the United Kingdom: This may have offered them a degree of protection." I'm not sure how true this is though...

The evidence for the benefits from exercise still seem to be pretty strong though, and so whilst you can take a breath of relief in regards to sitting (for now at least ), exercise still seems to be an important part of healthy living.

It is a bit extreme to say pork is dangerous. The people of Okinawa in Japan are known for being some of the healthiest and longest living people in the world, and much of it has been attributed to their diet. What is interesting is that the Okinawa people who follow the traditional Okinawa diet live longer than the average Japanese person and have a lower incidence of all types of cancers, and yet they consume much more pork than the typical Japanese person.

I will still continue to eat red and processe meat. If you overdo anything it can lead to an illness or disease. Everything in moderation.

Like smoking?

Ok not with smoking and other things added to the body that cause nothing but harm. But with food in general, as almost all food contains some form of nutrition, whether it be big/small.

Smoking only does harm?

Posted from TSR Mobile

Why is it that only boring foods and unpleasant activities like exercise are healthy? About the only thing that feels good that's also good for you is sleeping.

If I were to do everything in a healthy manner, my life would be like this. I would use electronic devices as little as possible, have no cell phone, spend most of my time at the gym exercising, go for walks at night or on cloudy days, eat nothing but fresh, organically grown plants, drink only purified water, and bathe without soap or shampoo.

Healthy life is so awful that after a few weeks of living that way, you might start to wish you were dead. LOL.

It seems like almost everything that's pleasant or brought to us by a new technology is also bad for us somehow. It's like healthy lifestyles force you to live like it's several hundred years ago, at least, but with additional restrictions based on new knowledge.

The responses to this report are entirely predictable, and in line with research into human cognitive biases. If something comes along and challenges people's cherished beliefs (or indeed food products), they start coming up with appallingly bad arguments.

"It'll be something new in 5 years/months/weeks" - if new evidence comes along suggesting that something we had not previously considered to cause cancer actually does, then yes, it will be. That's how science works. The notion that something new is said to cause cancer every few months or years is doubtful, especially considering that the peer-reviewed scientific literature has indicated for some time that processed meat and, to a lesser extent, unprocessed red meat, increases one's risk of cancer (and overall mortality and cardiovascular disease, as well as Type 2 diabetes).

"This is social engineering by fascists" - no, it's not. Nobody's saying that you should completely cut out red and processed meat. If you want to, it is simply recommended to just look at how much you're eating and replace it, on occasion, with healthier options such as whole grains, legumes and nuts.

"We're all going to die eventually" - this is almost certainly true. But, by this logic, we should just close down all the hospitals and stop saving lives because "we're all going to die eventually". That was the point of this report - to increase public awareness to help save lives, particularly as surveys suggest that 40% of men eat more than 90g of red and processed meat a day.

"Everything in moderation" - everything? Mercury, cyanide and tobacco in moderation? The term "moderation" could also be very self-serving: someone who eats 100g of red and processed meat a day will probably have a very different idea of what moderation is than somebody eats red and processed meat once a week or so.

"These health experts want to suck all the joy out of life" - if the only sources of joy people have are tobacco, alcohol and red and processed meat, then some people's lives are more glum than I had previously thought.

Because that's comparable...

If anyone has misunderstood the science here it's you. This is epidemiological research that does not indicate causation, and it's quite well understood that there are a range of confounding factors that lower the risk of cancers in non-meat eaters. Even if processed meat indeed is causative for CRC, it seems the difference in cancer risk between those who consume no processed meat and those who consume it daily, based on the current data, is very small, around 1%.

So really, you can see why people criticise sensationalist headlines like this, claiming that " X WILL GIVE YOU CANCER" when the reality is nowhere near as sinister. If you are a healthy, active individual who consumes a balanced diet with sufficient amounts of vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, fibre etc. then you hardly need to give your meat consumption a second thought, unless you are really taking to absurd levels.

If anyone has misunderstood the science here it's you. This is epidemiological research that does not indicate causation, and it's quite well understood that there are a range of confounding factors that lower the risk of cancers in non-meat eaters. Even if processed meat indeed is causative for CRC, it seems the difference in cancer risk between those who consume no processed meat and those who consume it daily, based on the current data, is very small, around 1%.

So really, you can see why people criticise sensationalist headlines like this, claiming that " X WILL GIVE YOU CANCER" when the reality is nowhere near as sinister. If you are a healthy, active individual who consumes a balanced diet with sufficient amounts of vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, fibre etc. then you hardly need to give your meat consumption a second thought, unless you are really taking to absurd levels.

It is 100% comparable.

The studies I've cited have controlled for a range of factors, and there are now a range of known mechanisms by which processed meat would cause cancer.

I've not made any claims about the size of the effect or whether sensationalist headlines were justified, but I am saying that those specific arguments are not logical.

This information has been around for so long, how has it only been published in the news now?