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First They Came for My Bacon
I feel like I’m being trolled. This announcement has all the ingredients to make me furious: it’s a “health” message in the New York Times, from a UN-ish Non-Governmental Busybody, aimed at governments around the world who interest themselves with their citizens’ eating habits.
In other words, it’s the perfect storm of nonsense. Plus, they’re trying to take away our bacon.
Eating processed meat, like hot dogs and corned beef, can raise the risk in humans of getting colon cancer, a report by the World Health Organization said on Monday.
There was also some evidence that eating red meat, including beef, pork and lamb, can cause cancer in the colon, prostate or pancreas, the W.H.O.’s International Agency for Research on Cancer said in the report.
File this in the “Not Interested Department.” And I don’t care about this, either:
The findings, which are meant to help governments make dietary recommendations, linked increased risks of developing certain cancers to the amount of meat consumed.
Okay, joking aside, I still have a hard time wondering why the WHO is spending any money and any brain cycles worrying about this, when there are so many other World Health Crises for the World Health Organization to deal with, like malaria and all sorts of horrible diseases. Those, of course, are in Africa or somewhere else, far from my charcuterie plate, miles and miles from my bacon.
It reminds me of a joke I read last week:
Normal Person: Women as young as 11 are being sold into slavery, sexually abused, and murdered with impunity in the Middle East!
Feminist: Yes, but there aren’t enough women on the Facebook board of directors.
They keep missing the forest for the bacon-scented trees.
Published in Culture
Because WHO exists to nag Western Nations (read: America) to do what WHO believes is the right thing. In this case, we must all give up our patriarchal devotion to cooking meat and become thin, wispy vegans living a meager existence.
After all, eating meat makes Americans grow up big and strong, and we can’t have that! It’s not fair to other nations.
They can have my bacon when they pry it from my cold, dead hands … so a little patience on their part, if they’re right, is all I’m really asking.
I am wondering why any American tax dollars go to fund the WHO.
It ran on all the major net news tonight (saw it at the Y). All the reports were heavily edited, and relied heavily on B-roll. When I saw steaks on the grill I wondered “are they talking about that specific steak that’s on screen, or steaks generally as a class?”
Spending any time obsessing over studies flacked by the New York Times leads to cranial rectal impaction.
The only thing I’d change is:
Feminist (outraged) yes AND there aren’t enough women on the Facebook board of directors.
Since we feminists have a tendency to conflate real world problems with first world problems as if they were all One Problem. As long as one person is oppressed, then none of us is free! Therefore if there is genital mutilation in Ethiopia, I am oppressed.
You are. They’re looking at what are known as epidemiological studies, which cannot demonstrate cause and effect.
So this is like saying eating ice cream causes shark bites. Hey, they both happen in the summer, they’re highly correlated, so there you go!
Lies, damn lies, and the ignorant interpretation of statistics.
But a win for WHO because they got headlines around the world.
And yes, I’ve looked into the research behind this extensively. I’ll continue to eat my bacon.
As my little daughter who just walked past me just said, “Mmmmm, bacon!”
(edit: and she collapsed in a fit of the giggles when she realized it was the American flag, then spent about ten minutes spinning around and saying, “Mmmmm, bacon! Mmmm, bacon!”)
Governments making sausages is much more hazardous.
One of my children once asked me if we are going to eat when we get to heaven. We discussed the story in the New Testament about Jesus eating with people after He’d been resurrected, but to myself, I thought, “Hmmm…how can it be Heaven if there isn’t any bacon??”
I heard this being discussed on the radio on my way to work, and I decided that life was too short to give up meat, especially smoked sausage or bacon.
If we are to cut back on bacon should we export what we have to Syria or Saudi Arabia?
You knew these were coming right?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjR0AYf4pSM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXhJPey3i_A
My grandfather has eaten bacon almost everyday of his life. He had a heart attack and triple bypass surgery >20 years ago. They put him on statins and lipitor, and he never changed his bacon habit. He is now 88 years old.
Tuck, could you give us a run-down of the study with some more details? I’ve so far just seen my vegan friend post this on Facebook. She was initially skeptical but later decided the evidence was good enough for her. I suspect my standards will be higher.
Bacon delivery via Cruise missles ?
Oh, well done!
(Ha! See what I did there? I didn’t even see it until I saw it.)
Bacon is a gateway meat for vegetarians.
Well, we know Jews like Jesus weren’t big fans of bacon, but for reasons other than WHOs’.
However we also know God’s thoughts on meat vs. veggies:
Working the soil was punishment.
Puts me in mind of that canard about the frog in a pot of water. Heat it gradually and the frog supposedly sits there and dies. (False, unfortunately – it does make a good fable.)
I’m thinking that if they want to take our bacon, they’ll need a good long period of slow heating. Like, start small with a tax on chorizo or something, then manufacture some shortages of Smithfield ham just before Thanksgiving.
But if they’re audacious enough to come for the bacon first, before we’re dulled and desensitized, let ’em try. Man, those little totalitarians are gonna get smoked.
anonymous, how could you?!
Dude, life’s too short to waste my time on WHO propaganda. Here’s a post I did from three years ago on my personal blog covering the same topic:
“The Latest “Red Meat Will Kill You” Scare”
Where I quote a professional statistician on one of these studies:
Humans evolved to eat meat. It’s what makes us unique among the primates, and is what allows us to have a big brain. And yes, our meat-preferring ancestors became the longest-lived primates on that diet.
Yes, you can infer a lot about vegans from that fact.
Bacon is a terrible thing to waste…
Eat meat = big brain.
Do note eat meat = ?
And a couple weeks ago, the diet nags were saying, “Oops. Whole milk is better than skim.”
Become food for the Morlocks.
As long as it isn’t cured.
*Something* has to kill us all. I’ll take the chance of colon cancer at 70 if it means I can spend my life enjoying every morsel of bacon instead of eating boring-ass farina or whatever the WHO would prefer we eat for breakfast.
I am enjoying the sanctimonious vegans posting this article on facebook. They are almost all smokers.
All known cases of life have ultimately ended in death. Bacon-related is not so bad a way to go.
After reading The Big Fat Surprise I decided to not take any “scientific” diet and health reports very seriously. It seems the studies (the sensational ones, at least) are almost always undertaken with a predetermined end result in mind. Whatever is the forbidden food this week will be next week’s miracle cure for what ails you. Might as well enjoy. As someone pointed out, the statistics for death are running 1:1.