I’d be happy to eat fish every day, but most fish seems to be bad for you too. 
Here’s a relative fish safety chart. There are only a few that you should always avoid. And all those asterisks… pass the prosciutto!
" I think living kills you! Until someone convinces me that eating a specific diet will assure that I live to 100 and then die a painless death I think I’ll continue to enjoy the foods I enjoy in moderation. The danger is how this changes people’s behavior. "
Bravo ! I agree with you. You can take these studies and do with them what you will. You can abstain from ever eating these things again and make substitutions with man- made sculptures of condensed by-products if it makes you feel better about what you choose to eat.
I don’t care for being chastised for the choices I make when it comes to food. I love cooking and eating.
I like whole eggs , cured meats , real butter and cheese. I also love and eat vegetables , quite a bit more than meats.
I try to buy local produce or at least what is grown in the USA whenever possible.
It is very old news about processed meat. it has been known for decades. So, why to change your diet now?
We do not use processed meats. We consume red meat about 3-4 times / months. There is plenty to eat without these items. However, if you have been consuming them, why to change your consumptions based on the very old news. And here is another one - sandwiches are not good way to consume foods either, mixing bread with animal proteins is not good for human body.
I think it’s better late than never.
The problem with this study is that it made one big, stupid mistake, it directly tried using smoking and processed meat (and red meat) as similar risks to getting cancer, and that is what got me angry. Things like bacon, smoked meats, processed meats like salami and bologna and such, are still food items, albeit ones that should be eaten sparingly, but they are food items. People have been eating them a long time, and in some cultures (my wife is Hungarian, for example), they used things like bacon grease for oils or on bread like butter, they ate a lot of pork, and from what I know they weren’t all dying of cancer at 35…and yes, those kind of stories don’t tell the old story, the way granpa joe who smoked until the day he died at 95 didn’t tell the picture about smoking risks, because genetics come into it (for example, people in tibet eat a diet that according to the American Heart Association, should give them all coronaries by the time they are in their 30’s, cause all they eat is meat and dairy products…not to mention the AHA assumptions about dietary cholesterol and heart disease were bogus to start with). Smoking on the other hand is simply an addictive habit that despite claims to the contrary, has no safe level, and no benefit, only negatives, so comparing them is comparing something that has no safe level of usage, no direct benefits to those who use it…
I also don’t understand why for example italian sausage is on the list of processed meats. Italian sausauge is not smoked, it is ground pork and spices, and while i am not saying you should eat this every day or regularly (as much as I love them), it isn’t any more dangerous that other forms of meat.
My answer to them? You don’t want to be eating bologna or salami or smoked sausage regularly, any kind of processed food has that problem (more on that in a bit), there is no doubt that a diet where vegetables make up the bulk of the diet, with lean protein and with moderate intake of carbs (preferably whole grain), is the healthiest one. However, and this is something any dietary expert worth their salt with say, food isn’t just fuel, it is also a lot of other things to us. So once in a while, enjoying a hot dogs at a ballgame or at a meal isn’t going to kill you, an italian hero is not going to kill you (if you happen to like them), these are treats. I don’t recommend eating bacon regularly, but if you have a BLT sandwich once in a while, or bacon and eggs, isn’t going to kill you. Like with fast food, the problem isn’t having them at all, it is regularly eating them.If you eat processed meat every day, of course there can be problems, it does increase your risk, but if you eat it occassionally, that risk is likely along the lines of background noise aka it is just as likely something else would kill you as that.
And yes, if you are going to eat things like that, try to find ones that are untreated, specifically with nitrates and nitrites, same with hot dogs (the ones we eat are from grass fed beef, no nitrates, no preservatives), the chemicals they use are a disaster, same with commercial bacon.
BTW, the same thing applies to grilling, grilled meat has the same risks (I suspect things like long smoked bbq has the same problems), the compounds in question come from heat. There are ways to address these risks (if you like your hamburgers well done, or sausage, pre cook them at a low temperature, and finish them on the grill, lot less risk from what i recall). And again, this should be a relative treat, this shouldn’t be the bulk of a diet.
I also read some of the suggested alternatives, and I wonder about them. A number of people mentioned things like PBJ or peanut butter sandwiches, but what kind of peanut butter are you talking about? Commercial peanut butter uses high fructose corn syrup in it and they also have been known to use hydrogenized oils and chemicals to keep it from seperating, all of which are not great; someone mentioned hummus (which I love), but there have been problems with commercial hummus with listeria and such…
I would rather that they had come out and instead of scare tactics, like comparing these foods to smoking and the risk of cancer, to come out and say that these need to be eaten in moderate scarcity, and be realistic about the risk. If I read the report correct, in the world, with 7 billion people, they say there are 8.5 million cases of cancer a year, and that around 33,000 were attributable to eating processed meat (actually, the report wasn’t clear, I don’t know if that included all meat or just processed ones)…We also don’t know what the level of consumption of those 33,000 was, for all we know they ate processed meats every day in large quantities…
And one of the encouraging things I am hearing is that people are listening, apparently there are major shifts in consumption habits from what I hear. For example, the soda industry is worried, sales of both regular and diet sodas are plummeting, from what I also understand sales of processed foods in general are declining, and people seem to be seeking out healthier alternatives, if not en masse, as a growing thing. I only could wish government policy supported more healthy eating, getting rid of subsidies for things like corn and soybeans that lead to crappy food being cheap, and revised dietary standards to not emphasize grains (which is politics, not science) and give rational ideas on what to eat.
I was one of the people that suggested nut butters. Personally, I use almond butter. But whether it’s almond or peanut butter, I always buy no-sugar-added, with the nuts the only ingredients. What passes for peanut butter in many stores is just junk food.
@collegestudent:
Yep, that was my point, wasn’t saying nut butters weren’t a good alternative, only that I suspect what a lot of people are thinking about ie Jiff and so forth, are not so healthy themselves. Kind of like all the low fat or no fat products loaded with sugar and salt to make them palatable:)
^^^100% agree!
Didn’t some people die recently from tainted peanut butter? Don’t almonds have to be treated now before they are sold? Some are heat treated, some are radiated, and packages don’t have to say! Better labelling would help us all understand how our food is processed, because sadly, most of it is processed somehow.
And recently, the requirement to add country of origin to meat packages was waived. What a bad idea.
Everything causes cancer. Phones, emissions from cars, too much sunlight, too little sunlight, breathing in city air, walking, sleeping, blinking. It all causes cancer. Just adopt healthy habits and live your life. They sensationalize everything. Today wine is good for you. Next week, it will cause cancer. In a month, it will be good for your heart again. It’s all nonsense. Just ignore it and you do you.
^Already happened. A bunch of US wines have been accused of having too much arsenic.
quote=musicprnt, … and from what I know they weren’t all dying of cancer at 35.
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Please understand it’s not a matter of all or none. It’s about the rates at which that particular cancer is found.
Interesting that you chose to tell us about Hungary, which happens to have one of the three highest rates in the entire world for this type of cancer.
All things in moderation, including moderation. Oh, and whoever said that if all humans were vegans we couldn’t grow enough food to feed ourselves was wrong – it takes many more calories of plant matter to raise livestock for meat than they produce. Not a vegetarian, just sayin’.
“Interesting that you chose to tell us about Hungary, which happens to have one of the three highest rates in the entire world for this type of cancer.” For colorrectal cancer that is true, but what is interesting is that South Korea is #1. Has Korea’s diet changed that much, because supposedly Asian style diets that are high in rice and vegetable consumption should prevent this kind of thing (and it could be that Korea which industrialized over the past 60 years, are eating more junk food".
What is also interesting is there are different rates for men and women, pretty significantly so, which shows how hard sometimes it is to pin this stuff down.
The other thing you have to be careful of is lifestyle as well. I doubt there are any historical studies on cancer going back 100 years, but I wonder if the cultures in eastern europe that ate a lot of pork and bacon had the same problem back then, that some of this might reflect the diet in a more sedentary world (and this is just musing), that eating heavy food like that when you burn it off might be less dangerous than the modern world in doing so.
I think the real answer is that in anything like this, moderation is the key, and if you are going to eat things like bacon or hot dogs or smoke sausage occassionally, trying to find the healthiest alternatives may not be a bad idea, like bacon that isn’t full of chemicals, hot dogs that have god knows what in them, and if eating meat choosing the best quality you can. One of the problems, as illustrated by Justonedad’s post, is that their eating in general may be out of whack, where things like smoked meats made up a lot of what they ate, along with things like potatoes, and weren’t balanced out by vegetables, the traditional diets in places like eastern europe, Germany and central europe were not heavy in green vegetables, salads and green vegetables were relatively rare (in part because they are what they had, which was generally heavy on pork, some chicken, onions, potatoes and root vegetables like beets, turnips) from what I know.
Unlike many Asian diets, Korean diets can be high in beef. Think bulgogi. Could also be genetic as Korea is one of, if not #1, the least genetically diverse nations.
Wine, like prosciutto, is an inherent good.
I just don’t care. I put 5-6 slices of bacon on a burger and I’m gonna keep doing that. I have a ribeye steak every Saturday, and I’m gonna keep doing that.
“Wine, like prosciutto, is an inherent good.” I agree, the only difference with wine and prosciutto is with prosciutto, it pays to get the better quality stuff, the standard hormel prosciutto these days is a disappointment, they are chemically treating it and it lacks the pepper on the outside…
Traditional proscuitto di parma has no pepper. Just salt. I guess I’m a food snob but I wouldn’t consider anything with Hormel on the label as proscuitto. Another key point to maximizing the proscuitto eating experience is proper slicing to get the super thin slices, something that is seldom mastered by my local deli counter.