this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2025
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Public Health

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There is no safe amount of processed meat to eat, according to new research | CNN (edition.cnn.com)
submitted 2 weeks ago by sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al to c/publichealth@mander.xyz
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A new study investigates the link between processed meat, sugar-sweetened beverages, and trans fatty acids, to diseases such as cancer, heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

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[โ€“] jet@hackertalks.com 7 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

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.

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).

[โ€“] onslaught545@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Couldn't the surge of cancer simply be that we're better at diagnosing it now?

[โ€“] jet@hackertalks.com 0 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

That is a great point! So 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.