Two Important -- Or Possibly Crackpot -- Scientific Discoveries Involving Food

As someone who both a) has been diagnosed with colon cancer, and b) really likes bacon, I feel compelled to comment on the scientific headlines burning up the interwebs telling us that bacon, or rather processed meat, is as carcinogenic as smoking. As the Guardian put it in their headline, "Processed meats rank alongside smoking as cancer causes -- WHO."

Only in the sense that a manicure ranks alongside the amputation of your arm as arm surgery. Put another way, while smoking every day increases your chances of developing lung cancer by 2,500%, eating bacon every day increases your chances of developing colon cancer by 18%.

Oh, and that 18% increase doesn't mean that the baseline chance of 5% elevates to 23%. Rather, it means 5% is increased by 5% times 18%, or 1%. So 5% goes to 6%.

So despite the headlines, I'd say you're safer with a BLT than you are lighting up. 

And I would definitely suggest the BLT over a hot dog. A group called Clear Food did an analysis of the contents of 345 various sausages and hot dogs. At risk of oversimplifying, I think it's fair to say that there's a very good chance that what's in your hot dog, and what the label says is in your hot dog, are only vaguely related to one another.* The most shocking finding: 2% of the hot dogs sampled contained human DNA.

As Stephen Colbert put it on last night's Late Show, "It turns out my bologna actually does have a first name." 

And I am seriously regretting that Costco dog I got last weekend. 


* If you're a vegetarian, I'd suggest taking a pass on the veggie dog.