Bacon and sausage lovers, there’s bad news—everything you feared about your favorite cheat food is true.
The World Health Organization just released a statement that says that processed meats cause cancer.
This report was released by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. It reclassified processed meats into “Group 1,” meaning they’re “carcinogenic to humans.” In addition, red meat is now classified as “probably” carcinogenic.
Before this, processed meat was in “Group 2A,” which is the group labeled as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”
The IARC concluded that every 50 g or processed meat—for reference, that’s only two slices of bacon—increases your risk of colorectal cancer by 18 percent.
Group 1 carcinogens include things like tobacco and asbestos, though this doesn’t necessarily mean that processed meat is as bad for you as smoking. The report stated: “for an individual, the risk of developing colorectal cancer because of their consumption of processed meat still remains small, but this risk increases with the amount of meat consumed.”
Cancer Research UK states that 64 of every 100,000 people get colorectal cancer every year. This means that according to the IARC’s report, 50g of bacon every day would increase your risk to 72 in 100,000, your lifetime risk being about 5%.
Compared to research on smoking, this isn’t so bad. Men who smoked 25 cigarettes per day had a 24 times higher risk of developing cancer than their counterparts.
So bacon definitely isn’t good for you, and it definitely will increase your risk of cancer. But it’s a small enough of an increase that every so often, you may be able to enjoy your favorite breakfast food.
