New Cancer Report Tries To Scare You Out of Eating Sausage and Bacon
Nevertheless, U.S. cancer rates are stable for women and declining for men.
"No amount of alcohol, sausage or bacon is safe," declares the Daily Mirror. The article is about the latest cancer prevention dietary guidelines from the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF), which isn't actually as alarmist as that sentence sounds. The WCRF report estimates that eating the equivalent of two strips of bacon a day would boost your risk of colorectal cancer by 16 percent. Translation: Eating about 38 pounds of bacon a year—or the equivalent weight in sausages and hot dogs—will raise your lifetime risk of colorectal cancer from about 4.5 percent to 5.2 percent for men and from 4.15 percent to 4.8 percent for women.
As far as alcohol goes, the WCRF estimates that drinking 20 grams of ethanol a day (a standard drink contains 14 grams) will increase your risk of colorectal cancer by 7 percent. Three drinks a day raises your risk of liver cancer by 6 percent. A mere 10 grams of alcohol per day increases your risk of esophageal cancer by 41 percent. And for women, drinking as little as 10 grams per day boosts their risk of breast cancer by 9 percent. So these relatively modest rates of tippling (absent other confounding factors) would increase your absolute lifetime risk colorectal cancer from 4.5 to 4.8 percent; liver cancer from 1 to 1.06 percent; esophageal cancer from 0.75 to 1 percent (if you're a man) or from 0.22 to 0.3 percent (if you're a woman); and breast cancer from 12.4 to 13.5 percent.
Meanwhile, a huge 2017 meta-analysis in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology finds significant health benefits from light to moderate drinking. For the purposes of the study, light drinking is defined as fewer than 3 drinks a week, moderate drinking is more than 3 and less than 14 drinks a week for men and less than 7 for women, and heavy drinking is more than 14 a week for men and more than 7 for women. To some extent, there is a trade-off between reduced cardiovascular risks and higher cancer risks. Some drinking may even help people avoid some cancers: Medscape reports of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology study that "light and moderate alcohol intake predicted reduced all-cause, cardiovascular, and cancer mortalities in both men and women."
For comparison, consider that the risk that persistent cigarette smokers will develop lung during their lifetimes is 1,100 percent greater than the risk that a nonsmoker will.
The WCRF also reports that being tall is a cancer risk. For every extra 2 and half inches over 5 feet and 2 inches in height, the WCRF finds that the risk of prostate cancer increases by 7 percent. My adult height is 6 feet 5 inches, suggesting that my risk of prostate cancer is up 40 percent. This boosts my lifetime risk for prostate cancer from 11 to a bit over 15 percent.
To mitigate these risks, the WCRF recommends: "Eat little, if any, processed meats" and "For cancer prevention, it's best not to drink alcohol." Noting the "people cannot necessarily influence" how tall they grow, the WCRF makes "no global recommendations" regarding cancer risks associated with stature.
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