BACON LINKED TO CANCER!

According to Erin Brodwin and Lydia Ramsey of Business Insider

The World Health Organization has published a paper linking processed meats — including everyone's favorite, bacon — to cancer.

They also found links between red meat and cancer, but those were less definitive.

Here's what the researchers wrote in their study about both foods:

Cancer and red meat: There is limited evidence in human beings for the carcinogenicity of the consumption of red meat.

Cancer and processed meat: There is sufficient evidence in human beings for the carcinogenicity of the consumption of processed meat.

In other words, while they found some evidence to suggest that there are links between eating red meat and developing cancer, it was limited. On the other hand, they found "sufficient" evidence to make the claim that eating processed meat increases your chances of developing cancer.

How precise was the link between processed meat and cancer?

According to studies cited in the WHO report, for every 50 grams of processed meat someone eats per day — the equivalent of a little more than a single hot dog — your risk of colorectal cancer goes up by 18%.

That sounds intense. But it doesn't mean that for every hot dog you consume, you're jacking up your risk of colorectal cancer. Instead, it means that compared with people who were studied who ate small amounts or no processed meat each day, people who ate 50 grams of it each day were more likely to get colorectal cancer.

This isn't the first time processed meat has been flagged as a cancer risk — the World Cancer Research Fund advises people to limit their consumption of ham, bacon, and salami to "as little as possible" and eat no more than 500g a week of red meat like beef.

And Tim Key, the Fund's epidemiologist at the University of Oxford, told The Guardian that his organization supports the WHO's "decision that there's strong enough evidence to classify processed meat as a cause of cancer, and red meat as a probable cause of cancer."

Colorectal cancer included, the WHO looked at 15 different types of cancer. But colorectal cancer had the strongest ties with processed and red meat consumption.