Okay, hi. I'm a farmer; and I'm here to talk to you all.
So, first of all, I'll explain what is going on here. Recently, The World Health Organization, and many cancer research groups, have named red meat to be probable carcinogen. A carcinogen is "a substance capable of causing cancer in living tissue." This does not mean however that red meat directly causes cancer. As I briefly did research on this, I found this video, which is helpful in understanding what a carcinogen is.
Processed meat is in Group 1, and red meat is in group 2A (from the above video). Red meat is basically being labeled similar to smoking. Too much of red meat, or smoking, will cause cancer. From what I've seen from cancer organizations and farming organizations, the main point of this study is to tell people to have a balanced diet. We don't need to be afraid of processed meat, but we also should not be eating 10 slices of bacon every day.
I'd also like to say that finding the source of cancer is rather difficult, and the one website I list below even claims that the research used for this study wasn't as clear-cut as most would think. I am not excusing processed foods by saying this, but just pointing out an alternative.
Here are some sources that I used for the above information:
PorkCares.org,
Grist.org, and
Pork.org.
Before I finish, I can't go without mentioning Grass-Fed meats. My family sells grass-fed beef, which means our cows eat only grass, they aren't fed any grain. Being grass-fed-only is very beneficial to the meat. Grass-fed beef has less fat, a lot of Omega 3s, and many other beneficial vitamins, including a good fat called "conjugated linoleic acid" (CLA). I'll quote the website Eat Wild about the CLA:
http://www.eatwild.com/healthbenefits.htm wrote:CLA may be one of our most potent defenses against cancer. In laboratory animals, a very small percentage of CLA—a mere 0.1 percent of total calories—greatly reduced tumor growth. There is new evidence that CLA may also reduce cancer risk in humans. In a Finnish study, women who had the highest levels of CLA in their diet, had a 60 percent lower risk of breast cancer than those with the lowest levels. Switching from grain-fed to grassfed meat and dairy products places women in this lowest risk category. Researcher Tilak Dhiman from Utah State University estimates that you may be able to lower your risk of cancer simply by eating the following grassfed products each day: one glass of whole milk, one ounce of cheese, and one serving of meat. You would have to eat five times that amount of grain-fed meat and dairy products to get the same level of protection.
(Hey, look at that... My family sells whole milk, cheese, and meat, all from grass-fed cows
) So, if you are worried about cancer in processed meats, maybe you should find a local farmer and buy some grass-fed meat.
Okay, that's all. To summarize: an over-excess of meat may cause cancer, so a balanced meal is highly recommended. If you are still nervous about eating meat, try grass-fed meat, which is not only good for you, but might even
lower your chance of getting cancer.