Processed meat causes cancer: World Health Organization

Meat-lovers, that pizza or sandwich you are planning for lunch may cause you cancer.

Coloretal cancer, to be specific, especially if you are eating processed meat like ham or sausage every day. The warning comes from the International Agency for Research on Cancer,  the cancer research agency of the World Health Organization.

It found eating 50 grams of processed meat a day increases the risk of developing colorectal cancer by 18 per cent. That means any meat that is salted, cured, fermented or smoked, which would include hot dogs, ham, sausage, or jerky.

And yes — bacon. It would be considered carcinogenic too.  A carcinogen is anything that is directly involved with causing cancer.

And the news isn’t much better for red meat. The IARC found it is probably carcinogenic. That means any meat from a mammal, such as beef, pork or lamb.

The experts from 10 different countries looked at over 800 studies on the association of more than a dozen types of cancers with eating red meat or processed meat to come up with its evaluation.