Not the same a US Francfurter and one from the EU, which has a strict regulations regarding preparation and content. US food in general is one of the most unhealthy of the first world, due to additives banned in the rest of the world, to disguise bad and cheap quality.
people who ate as little as one hot dog a day
Who TF is eating a hot dog every day? That’s their idea of a minimum amount of a particular food?
The only things not linked to cancer are the things not yet been studied. Seems like everything at some point has been linked to cancer.
The data showed that people who ate as little as one hot dog a day when it comes to processed meats had an 11% greater risk of type 2 diabetes and a 7% increased risk of colorectal cancer than those who didn’t eat any. And drinking the equivalent of about a 12-ounce soda per day was associated with an 8% increase in type 2 diabetes risk and a 2% increased risk of ischemic heart disease.
Sounds like a correlation… someone who eats one hot dog and drinks one soda per day is probably doing a lot of unhealthy things.
It’s also important to note that the studies included in the analysis were observational, meaning that the data can only show an association between eating habits and disease –– not prove that what people ate caused the disease.
Yup, that is what it is. A correlation. So overall not really worth the effort involved IMO. Not eating any processed meats at all is not likely a big issue, but your overall diet and amount of exercise/lifestyle. I would highly suspect that even if you did eat one hotdog per day, but had a otherwise perfect diet for the rest of the day and did plenty of exercise, got good sleep and all the other things we know are good for you then these negative effects would likely becomes negligible. But who the hell is going to do that? That’s the problem with these observational studies - you cannot really tease out the effect of one thing out of a whole bad lifestyle.
I hate headlines like this as it makes it sounds like you can just do thins one simple thing and get massive beneficial effects. You cannot. You need to change a whole bunch of things to see the types of reduction in risk they always talk about. Instead they always make it sounds like if you have even one hot dog YOU ARE GOING TO DIE.
I always loved the simple statement that:
Death is inevitably caused by swallowing tiny bits of saliva over time.
It illustrated the utter senseless linking of observed events to results with dubious research. Is it technically wrong? No. Is it correct? Of course not. (I hope.)
We are constantly being sold something. Sometimes it’s obvious - other times it’s not. Frequently its a bent truth to just nudge us in the direction the advertiser wants. Health is extraordinarily complicated. We know we should be healthy - but there is so much
noisepotential profit in the space… that it becomes hard to determine the correct path to take.Shit like the above is effectively tabloid journalism. If it is sensationalist - and urging you to act without thought … you absolutely should give it as much credence as an article about bat boy in the checkout line. Until these pseudo journalism “half-truth” adverts get degraded to tabloid levels they will continue to pollute our information channels with their snake oil.
It is possible to distill correct - or at least better information from questionable sources: we play the overlapping circle game. If you compare multiple sources of partial truth… each source added can begin to define the boundaries of what is true (or at least accepted as truth.) Now this isn’t perfect and certainly doesn’t replace real research - but this method in combination with learning to identify masked advertising is a way to protect yourself from falling prey to their trash.
What’s to be done about this shoddy reporting? When you see it - call it out for what it is. Shame the publisher. Trash the poster. Openly mock them. Do what you can to tarnish the perceived reputation of that outlet. If they sell sewage then make sure the stink sticks to them. Enough people doing this will start a positive feedback loop and eventually lead to visible improvements.
Is everything we eat associated with cancer? A systematic cookbook review
I personally think the reason EVERYTHING is linked to cancer, as well as the massive surge in cancer since the 1900s, is all due to the modern metabolism (sugar burners) being very different then pre-1900 metabolism (fat burners)
- High carbohydrate load, high blood glucose load, high insulin levels
- Industrial Oil, systemic body inflammation
- Agrochemical contamination of food supply, more systematic inflammation
The problem with these observational studies is they don’t look at the modern metabolic context, so in this context, yes EVERYTHING is associated with cancer - because the studies arn’t looking at the right variables.
This is exactly why hard science doesn’t use association to draw conclusions, epidemiology is hypothesis generating only
If you haven’t read about the Metabolic Theory of Cancer I highly recommend giving it a read. It’s a much more compelling model, and explains the surge of cancer since 1900, as well as actionable steps to reduce incidence (reduce sugar and inflammation).
The surge of cancer since the 1900s is also explainable by the surge in our ability to detect cancer and overall understanding of it.
One big reason papers always find these links is just that they are finding correlations, which are always there, even for unrelated things. When you are looking at loads of factors in a observational study you are almost bound to find some accidental correlation. It is very hard to tell if that is just random or if there is a true cause behind it.
There are all sorts of spurious correlations if you look hard enough.
That is a great point! there is debate about our diagnostic capabilities improving. However, pick a year, any year and use that as year zero. We still have to account for the geometric growth of cancer after that year.
Going back to pre-1900s cancer, it was seen on rare occasions, if it was as common as today (50% of westerners will have cancer in their lives) then it would have shown up with some frequency in the historical medical literature.
I would use the same thought experiment for type 2 diabetes, cardio vascular disease (someone would have made a record of otherwise healthy people just falling over dead randomly in the streets), etc… the modern chronic diseases all appear to have a common starting point in the historical record >1900, which suggests a common cause. I think metabolic health is the most likely unifying theory, I could be wrong, but improving metabolic health doesn’t hurt.
We know there is a 3x risk of cancer for people with obesity. We know there is a 3x risk of cancer for people with type 2 diabetes. We also know global obesity is going up, and type 2 diabetes is going up. There are almost 1 billion people in the world diagnosed with T2D. The country with the highest T2D rate is also the country that eats the least amount of meat (India). Some new thing has happened globally since 1900 to cause this change.
Health effects associated with consumption of processed meat, sugar-sweetened beverages and trans fatty acids: a Burden of Proof study
Study title… CNN title is only about meat.
A meta-analysis of observational epidemiology
All of the issues with epidemiology apply
- association is not causation
- hypothesis generating only
- healthy user confounders
- people eating meat are often eating high carbohydrate diets
- metabolic context of the participants
- food frequency questionnaires filled out yearly or every 4 years.
I don’t have access to the paper, it hasn’t made it to the Free Academic circles yet, so I haven’t been able to read it.
