We’ve heard it off and on over the years but now it’s getting more conclusive: talk that eating too many processed meats can give you pancreatic cancer may not be just a lot of baloney.
Here’s the latest evidence via Elites TV:
A new study indicates that eating too many hot dogs, sausages, lunch meats, and other processed types of meats may put a person at risk of pancreatic cancer. This study, which was conducted by the Cancer Research Center at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu, is being discussed today at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research.
This is not the first study that has linked heavy meat consumption to pancreatic cancer, but previous studies have been somewhat inconclusive. In this instance, however, researchers studied over 190,000 men and women of diverse, multi-ethnic backgrounds. When the study began in the mid-1990s, each of the participants completed a questionnaire profiling his or her dietary habits. By the end of the study, 482 of the participants had developed pancreatic cancer.
Note, however, that this study is saying “too many.” So far no study has said that simply eating a hot dog, sausage, baloney sandwich etc. will give someone cancer. In a sense, this comes right back to the idea of balance — which should extend to eating habits as well. Food Consumer.Org has more details here, including this:
There was no association between consumption of poultry, fish, dairy products and eggs with the pancreatic cancer risk. Nor was there a link between the cancer risk and overall intake of total fat, saturated fat or cholesterol.
Previous studies already found that those who heavily consumed red meat and processed meat were 50 percent more likely to get colorectal cancer compared with those who did not use much processed meats.
The researchers suggested that some reactions might generate carcinogens or cancer-causing agents such as heterocyclic amines or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons during the meat processing, which might be responsible for the increased risk of pancreatic cancer.
In the U.S. 32,180 cases of pancreatic cancer are diagnosed each year and 31,800 are expected to die of it. The pancreatic cancer risk is the same for men and women.
In other words, this could be something solveable for the meat industry, which needs to take a look at how the products are produced and see if there aren’t alternatives. Hot dogs, baloney, sausages have been out there for many years. Has there always been this problem with pancreatic cancer — or is a problem that arose with the advent of more efficient technologies, which could make the products faster and cheaper?
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.