I was carrying out a research for my project "Red Meat and Cancer" when I came across this question "How did the WHO conclude that red and processed meat causes cancer" and the following answer by Stephen Labit on quora.com. Please keep reading.
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The WHO has come to the conclusion on the advice of its
International Agency for Research on Cancer, which assesses the best
available scientific evidence. - Processed meats do cause cancer - WHO - BBC News
So where did the International Agency for Research on Cancer get their
data from? The full text of the assessments of the studies they looked
through are here (Page on thelancet.com), but I summarized in note format below to make it easy:
Summary:
On 22OCT2015, 22 scientists from 10 countries met at International Agency for Research on Cancer Monograph Working Group (or WG
for short) assessed 800 studies that investigated association between
cancer - redmeat/processed meat consumption (the details of eval
weights, data discrimination, and links to individual studies in full
text).
Meat consumption varies worldwide w/ some stats
Terms Defined:
Red meat
refers to unprocessed mammalian muscle meat—for example, beef, veal,
pork, lamb, mutton, horse, or goat meat—including minced or frozen
meat; it is usually consumed cooked.
Processed meat
refers to meat that has been transformed through salting, curing,
fermentation, smoking, or other processes to enhance flavour or improve
preservation.
Evidence assessed:
Positive
associations w colorectal cancer was the concern of majority of data
from assessed studies (data also available on 15 other types of
cancer). Majority of WG concluded sufficient evidence in human beings
for carcinogenicity of consumption of processed meat and limited
evidence w red meat (since they could not rule out chance, bias, and
confounding w latter).
Inadequate evidence in experimental animals
Mechanistic evidence assessed as strong for red meat, moderate for processed meat.
WG classification:
Consumption of processed meat as “carcinogenic to humans”
on basis of sufficient evidence for colorectal cancer and positive
association w consumption of processed meat found for stomach cancer.
Consumption of red meat as “probably carcinogenic to humans”
took into consideration all relevant data, incl substantial positive
association between consumption of red meat and colorectal cancer and
the strong mechanistic evidence. Consumption of red meat also
positively associated w pancreatic and w prostate cancer.
My thoughts:
Calculated
risk is the bottom line. Our bodies have natural mechanisms to
mitigate harm from the environment (to include our food), so it's less
of a matter of avoiding risk but staying informed of the risks allows
us to make effective decisions to control our fragility to those risks.
I
will certainly reduce the qty of processed meat I eat because at the
moment I do eat it frequently and in generous amounts (mmm bacon...)
Thanks for reading!
If you enjoyed these notes, check out my other notes on a variety of other topics at http://Stephenlabit.com -- a repository of personal projects.
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My conclusion. Red meat causes cancer. Avoid it as much as possible.
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