Scientists Demand Ban on Bacon, Claiming Link to 54,000 Cases of Cancer
Scientists are calling for a ban on supermarket bacon and ham after the chemicals used in their production were linked to more than 50,000 bowel cancer cases. The Mail has more.
A coalition of leading scientists says the refusal to ban nitrites – preservatives used to keep processed meats pink and long-lasting – has come at a devastating human and financial cost, with the NHS footing an estimated £3 billion bill to treat preventable cancers over the past decade.
Their analysis, based on figures from Cancer Research UK and the British Journal of Cancer, estimates that around 5,400 bowel cancer cases each year in the UK are caused by eating processed meats. Treatment costs for each patient average £59,000.
The warning comes exactly 10 years after the World Health Organisation’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified processed meat as a Group 1 carcinogen – placing it in the same risk category as tobacco and asbestos.
Despite this, ministers have done “virtually nothing” to reduce Britons’ exposure, according to Professor Chris Elliott OBE, founder of the Institute for Global Food Security and a former government adviser.
He said: “A decade on from the WHO report, the UK Government has done virtually nothing to reduce exposure to nitrites – the curing agents that make these products pink and long-lasting but also create nitrosamines, compounds known to trigger cancer.
“Every year of delay means more preventable cancers, more families affected and greater strain on the NHS.”
The scientists who worked on the original WHO report have now written to Health Secretary Wes Streeting urging him to ban nitrites in processed meats.
Their landmark report, published in 2015, analysed data from more than 800 studies and found that for every 50g of processed meat eaten a day, the risk of colorectal cancer increased by 18%.
Experts say it is specifically the combination of nitrates and processing methods used in meats such as bacon, ham and sausages that generates carcinogenic compounds when consumed.
Currently, up to 90% of bacon sold in the UK is thought to contain nitrites, which have been linked not only to bowel cancer but also breast and prostate cancers.
Worth reading in full.
First they came for sugar, then they came for bacon. Will life be worth living once all the simple ‘unhealthy’ pleasures are banned? I haven’t read the study, but a first thought is whether people who eat lots of bacon aren’t unhealthy in other ways that might explain a higher incidence of bowel, breast and prostate cancers. That’s often the problem with these studies – there are so many potential factors that could explain an 18% increase in various maladies. They’ll have statistical techniques to try to deal with that, for sure. But trying to work out why diseases like cancer develop as a result of eating certain foods is never an exact science.
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Bacon is dangerous according to the people who say mRNA vaccines are “safe and effective”.
Saturday is Bacon Roll Day in this family. However, we always buy Finnebrogue bacon which is made without nitrites or nitrates, and has the added bonus of coming from Co Down!
Same here, love Finnebrogue bacon and their ham. Sad they stopped selling hot dogs they were very tasty too.
They still do sausages.
Used to visit a factory where they ‘cured’ small bacon joints in 30 mins by injecting brine into the joint before vac packing. Often wondered how much nitrate made up the brine mix.
An old farmer told me that they just used sugar and salt to cure the bacon for their own family consumption. No saltpetre was used.
And Kathleen Stick wants us to trust the science that says vaccines are safe
…and when we’ve got rid of all the stuff that causes cancer, we all live forever do we..?
And what would that cost the already struggling to cope NHS? Eejits!
No, the Elite will prolong their lives by mRNA replacement therapy to reverse the ageing process while the rest of us must avoid damaging our organs, lest they be required for transplanting by those same Elite.
It would be interesting to see the evidence for these assertions and figures.
Hush your mouth! Evidence? Your betters have spoken, you will comply.
There is none, it’s all propaganda.
Yes, it’s a poor show when Will says he hasn’t read the report. Guess they have their column inches to fill:-)
Will works long, hard hours, late into the night – I don’t blame him at all!
Well done for pointing that out! I think many commenters’ criticisms of the DS are unfair.
Why should he be required to read any articles referenced on this website, for Pete’s sake???
The whole point is that the Daily Sceptic team are searching for interesting news articles to pass on for our “edification and amusement”, often giving us summaries from paywalled websites to which we don’t have access, and plentiful links to other articles and videos. I find this extremely useful.
And they seem to be working SEVEN DAYS A WEEK, which is well beyond the call of duty, in my view, and they should all take every weekend off, like most working people. They do not have to be at our beck & call 24/7 !!!
There isn’t any.
If we kicked out all the gimmigrants and those we import with TB we could readily treat our home grown sufferers of bacon disease.
😱😱
The NHS is the gift that keeps on giving. Force people to part with their money in exchange for a promise of goods and services that they haven’t asked for, then justify interfering with how they live their lives in order to “save” an organisation that they are paying for whether they like it or not.
Professor Karol Sikora on X: “Reading through the hundreds and hundreds of pages of central NHS communications about how to shut me down, I want to ask. Do they not have better things to be doing? I once called the NHS the ‘last bastion of communism’ and they’ve never forgiven me for it. Then lockdown came,” / X
Yes, the NHS was created in the post-war socialist government phase and it is a Stalinist organisation, of that there is no doubt.
So many we never hear from again. Professor Sikora for one. Anyone else noticed?
No science to back up this ridiculous assertion that nitrates/nitrites linked to cancer, all weak associational studies that prove nothing. Should we ban vegetables that contain nitrates too, spinach, beets and celery? Here’s a good video from a few years back explaining it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ygs2j0v0sU
And another good video on the subject from Ben Bikman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gA0hmUD7ZI
Perhaps we’d be better off banning eating at all, and then we could fix the problem 100% in ~10 days like good Marxists? *some* would get a gold star I’m sure…
The same World Health Organisation that declared The Pandemic That Never Was.
The who, the last people in the world to take health advice from.
“… estimates… “
There it is… speculation dressed up as The Science™️
Most of the nitrates and nitrates we consume come from plants we eat. Now what, ban veggies? What will vegans do?
And these chemicals occur naturally in our bodies anyway.
Saltpeter – potassium nitrate – which converts to nitrate in the curing process was used by the Romans and everyone since, to preserve meats.
These preservatives prevent clostridium botulinum which produces very harmful neurotoxins. See what that would do to the sacred NHS.
The choice is get brain damage, or get cancer.
However the two primary risk factors for cancers are: advancing age; genetics. There is no prevention or cure for these.
Attributing cancers to single select causal agents in diet is not supportable by falsifiable evidence, because there are so many confounding factors.
Claims about “preventable” cancers carry as much credence as “safe and effective”.
They are working on a cure for old age – targeting pensioners’ wealth and wellbeing
I think they’re calling it assissted suicide.
No, they’ve sanitised it by using the word ‘dying’ instead of ‘suicide’.
Another cover up for all the turbo cancers in the under 65’s who took the MRNA covid vaxxes. It is the bacon stupid.
Absolutely!
Actually, first they came for tobacco, the demonisation of which had widespread support.
These precedents so often are set with something that everyone thinks is sensible and reasonable.
But people never, ever, ever see the thin end of the wedge.
Tobacco becomes sugar becomes bacon becomes anything they want that they can plausibly link to poor health.
Seat belts becomes motorbike helmets becomes high viz clothing becomes anything a burraucrat wants to impose on us for our own safety.
Once the principle is set, it will get used repeatedly and then abused. As sure as day becomes night and night becomes day.
They should have come for sugar, but in 1965-67 a small number of papers published in the US and Canada (paid for by the sugar refiners, surprise surprise) managed to shift the blame onto saturated fat.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5099084/
We here in the the UK have been consuming refined sugars for centuries and saturated fats since God was in short trousers, why/how suddenly in the latter half of the 20th Century did these foods become an existential threat?
Sugars are carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are all reduced to glucose in the body for energy. Unused glucose is metabolised into glycogen stored in muscle and liver tissue. When these are “full” it is turned to fatty tissue and stored.
Fruits, vegetables are full of sugars – sucrose, fructose, glucose – starch and other carbohydrates.
You’re not wrong in terms of your basis assertion on sugars but I think you’ll find the quantity of such sugars as an overall percentage of our modern diet has greatly increased. That (perhaps coupled with less physical exercise) is surely the problem.
Yes, the trouble now is that every manufactured food contains sugar and people become addicted to it. Returning to a more natural diet would help but convenience foods are so, well, convenient.
Actually, first they came for tobacco, the demonisation of which had widespread support.
Not until well into the 1980s, when the communist boombabies starting moving out of universities into the real world in numbers. Before that, everyone smoked while life expectancy kept increasing.
“But people never, ever, ever see the thin end of the wedge.”
And the ones who do are conspiracy theorists and spreaders of disinformation, and/or being paid by Big Tobacco, Big Oil, etc.
I have to ask “Has the WHO contributed anything of value to world health?”
Since it was captured by Marxists, no.
WHO completes with the UN for the title of The Most Useless.
*competes
I am nearly 80 and have ploughed through an awful low of bacon, ham and sausages. In my youth I had bacon and eggs daily until I was about 17, and have supplemented these with all sorts of charcuterie since, plus porkers at least once a week.
Still fit despite being a bit on the heavy side (it is genetics, honestly)
Well, if you do happen to succumb, don’t tell them what you ate or you’ll justify their theories! 😉
I would have thought calling for a ban on the Cancer causing Covid mrna injections would have a much better and genuine effect on reducing cancers, heart issues, blood clot issues and the neurological injuries caused to the population who had these experimental substances forced into them, by probably the self same so called scientists.
The older we are the more likely we are to die of bowel cancer but the longer we live our risk of dying of other things increases faster – so the relative risk of dying of bowel cancer drops.
Bowel cancer screening for over 60s (and under some other age) was introduced in England and Wales in 2006. Since then the previous rapid reduction in annual death rate from Colon cancer (ICD-10 code C18) has leveled off. Rectal/Anal cancer (ICD-10 codes C19-C21) death rates were not significantly improving and seem unaffected by the introduction of screening.
Clearly the massive increase in bacon consumption is to blame. /sarc
People who are saved from dying of bowel cancer are then available to contract some other disease: cure that, get another… da capo al fine.
The real people who are a burden on the (bang those pans) NHS are people who just don’t smoke, booze enough, or eat enough bacon and selfishly don’t die early and therefore live on to get more diseases that need treatment.
Considerate people make sure they die around the age of 70 so they are no longer a burden on the State pension, and don’t keep hanging on to need hip replacements, diabetic treatment, high blood pressure, strokes, arthritis, dementia, renal dysfunction and cancers.
Yes, but how much do you have to eat in order for it to be a significant risk? Most substances, including water, if consumed to excess will cause you harm. Most carry some sort of risk. But I think the very worst thing you can do is worry about it – enjoy life, and if your body craves a bacon butty, have one!
I’ve heeded your advice, and just had one! It was delicious
So mike r must now either live with this on his conscience or celebrate helping making you happier… I’d hazard a guess which of those.
I firmly believe that bacon is exactly as carcinogen as cigarettes. Which, in this case, means that the lobby groups calling for a ban of either have exactly as much clue about what causes so-called cancer (a disease unknown to man until the 20th century) than everybody else which means none at all. If the cause was known, it could be treated. Since it’s unknown, every crank with his very own theory of the universe and every busybody who knows exactly what all other people should really be doing wields it to support his pet theory.
Just to recapitulate this once more: A causes B means A is both a necessary and a sufficient precondition for B. This means B cannot happen unless A occurred first and B will always occur after A did. Anything else is not a cause-and-effect relation.
If bacon causes ‘cancer’, all people eating bacon must get ‘cancer’ and people who don’t eat bacon must not get ‘cancer’.
Science is rooted in uncertainty, but these days it is presented as certainty, the final revelation. “Obesity” causes diabetes, but many diabetics are not “obese”and most so-called obese are not diabetics, but thin people get it too, and obesity can be the result of having diabetes because it is a physiological disorder. The primary risk factor for diabetes is age – true for most diseases. Changes at cellular level in the respiratory tract do take place caused by chemicals in the smoke inhaled from burning tobacco leaf, paper, and combustion retardants – and these changes are demonstrable. These changes do not necessarily lead to cancers in all subjects. Nicotine which is what smokers crave, is not carcinogenic but the ant-smoking brigade want to ban vaping because reasons, even though those who switch to vaping remove themselves from the risk of inhaling the by-products of tobacco smoking. The problem is there are too many people who get paid to interfere in our lives – and many of them are paid out of our taxes. It is time to stop all Government (taxpayer) funding of so-called scientific research. How can politicians and bureaucrats decide which research should be funded? Researchers research areas… Read more »
And yet there are still health “experts” in favour of legalising the smoking of cannabis.
My gut feel is that cannabis can be very bad for you. It’s not my thing but I would steer clear of it anyway. That said, booze can be very bad for you too, but I drink it every day. But that has little to do with whether either should be legal. I think it might have been Epping Blogger that made the argument that legalising certain drugs was problematic because more people would abuse them and become a burden on society – even if you don’t give them welfare, you may need to put them in prison when they commit crimes, which costs money, not to mention the disruptive effect on society. I think there’s a lot to be said for that argument, though my gut still tells me banning things that people do because of some potential (rather than actual) effect on others is hard to justify. In any case I don’t believe in banning anything on “health” grounds.
That’s the NHS argument: The NHS has to spend money on X. I claim that Y causes X. Hence, I demand that Y must be outlawed so that the NHS doesn’t have to spend money on X anymore.
In the more general form, that’s a pseudo-argument I’ve christened the “cost argument.” Someone who doesn’t particularly like Y points out that “Y has a cost” but doesn’t mention that anything else has a cost, too. As anything else has a cost as well, it’s an invalid argument.
Well not all costs are the same of course. The NHS “cost” is a avoidable one – simply get rid of the NHS and the “problem” goes away. The cost of having a bunch of drug-addled people causing huge problems and committing crimes is harder to avoid and difficult to pin on the people causing the problems. I’m not saying I am convinced by the argument, but I feel it’s something to consider. I agree it’s easy to fall into the trap of justifying ones prejudices with this kind of argument. I used to think illegal drugs should remain illegal but I have changed my mind on this as I have on many other things, in recent years.
It’s simply not an argument because absolutely everything has a cost. Eg, policemen chasing drug dealers don’t work for free and they don’t work for the niggardly UK welfare payments, either. And while they’re doing this, everybody and his dpg is taking whatever supposedly illegal drugs he wants to take because they’re easily available everywhere. But at least people with acute lumbago who are in serious pain can’t get drugs (benzodiazepines) which would help them as they’re so ultra-prohibited that they must only delivered in form of single pills with an escort of armed policemen. That’s certainly very valuable to society. I mean, what’s better than making people suffer perfectly avoidable pain? Don’t we all just love that?
Sorry for the sarcasm but I know this pain myself quite well and I don’t think society at a large has gained anything from me having to make the experience.
Indeed the “war on drugs” costs a lot of money.
As always, ‘experts’ are in favour of legalizing want they want to do (smoke cannabis products) and outlawing what they don’t want to do (smoke tobacco).
Changes at the cellular level take place in the lung all the time and not only during the very brief intervals someone happens to be looking at them. How else could components of an inhaled gas and particle mixture of unknown composition get into the blood stream?
All the great discoveries of the past, were made without Government involvement or funding.
Two counterexamples which come immediately to mind would be the Haber-Bosch process for obtaining nitrogen from the air (German government during WWI needed that for producing explosives and it was obviously also needed for German agriculture) and what we’re using to communicate here which grew out of a US government project called ARPANET.
It is a fact that the world is an extremely dangerous place and this is borne out by the fact that so far no one has got out of it alive.
I’m just waiting for the study that vegetables feel pain.
The study was undertaken at the Bose Institute in Culcutta and is described in detail by Aldous Huxley in his book Jesting Pilate (India and Burma). 1926. “Sensitive souls, whom a visit to the slaughter-house has converted to vegetarianism, will be well advised, if they do not want to have their menu still further reduced, to keep clear of the Bose Institute.”
So 54,000 people were studied from birth to death. All bacon eaten was weighed and recorded from birth. A control group of another 54,000 was used for comparison. It was proven beyond all doubt, according to all of the scientific data, that is publicly available, that bacon killed 54,000 people?
No, I didn’t think so.
It has long been my view that most of what is defined as cancer is just normal cell behaviour.
It would be interesting to know the full background and history of these scientists, be strange if they were all based in Islamic countries
An old colleague of mine died from stomach cancer at the ago of 29. He was a teetotaller, so that didn’t do him any good.
Some researchers have said, and I believe them, that cancer is caused by a FUNGUS, which thrives in ACIDIC conditions, and is best treated by Anti-Fungal medicine, as well as alkaline things like ordinary Baking Soda.
So was that a double blind placebo test, or some broader correlation with all sorts of other possible confounding factors. Co-op bacon is the best!
I think Smoked Streaky Bacon with lots of fat, from happy British outdoor-raised pigs, with all the frying fat poured over the bacon rashers before serving, is the best. Never mind draining off the fat— fat gives all meat its delicious flavour, and I think the modern practice of cutting off most, if not all, of the fat from cuts of meat borders on criminality. 🙂
Er, why not just ban the chemicals?
Because nitrites are necessary preservatives, inhibiting the growth of bacteria, and also add to the distinctive flavour of cured meats.
Complete Cobblers! 1) A bacon ban will be followed by a total ban on pork, in order to please Muslims who have already banned pork from public school meals, as well as in the military. 2) A bacon ban is part of the Globalist/ Bill Gates plan to “Abolish Animal Agriculture” and force the world to be Vegans, who are more docile, physically weak and easily controlled. Meat will be reserved for the “Elites”, just like in the good old days of Lords & Serfs: “The New Feudalism”. 3) The surge in bowel cancer has been directly linked to CovidHoax Vaccines, and also to the recent fashion for anal sex being pushed upon young heterosexual couples in the West, especially females, because this is the norm in Africa, as well as in Islamic cultures, in order to allow little girls to be raped by relatives and still married off as “technical virgins”, often to their own cousins or uncles. 4) Eat as much bacon as you want, full of tasty fat, salt, and delicious nitrites! And be sure to fry it either in butter or lard! I always do…Can’t stand lean meat! And thank the Good Lord for His Bounty… Read more »
Statistical studies are used to support claims about everything under the sun.
Some hard cause-and-effect evidence is required.
Good luck with that! Trying to stop the British from eating bacon sarnies, yea right! 😂😂😂
What an utterly childish response by whichever ‘scientists’ published this research.
we all lived in houses with lead piping and lead based paint. We found that it caused significant health problems, particularly in the development of young children, so we banned the use of lead in both areas. We didn’t ban plumbing or living in houses.
If nitrates are causing the cancer, then ban the nitrates in production.
What’s the betting there’s a bunch of thin, pale faced vegan lab techs with just enough bodily strength to type the data into the computer are behind this.
A call to ban bacon? Good luck with that. It took us several generations to ban smoking which is is way more toxic and not as tasty!