Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
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
If ours is a world where bacon, sausages, salami and ham are killers… then I don’t want to live.
Here’s a public service announcement: Uncured bacon (really, cured by other means) is just as delicious, and is probably actually healthy. I’ve found it at Target and Trader Joe’s so far.
People who eat only vegetables die also. But do they really ever live?
thanks for the tip! I’ve been looking for it at King Soopers.
Rob all I can tell you is that when I was in college free alcohol was poetry. Alcohol free makes me want to weep. Bacon free, and Prosciutto free is just too depressing too think about.
Regards
What’s really scary is the impending Internet of Things, where every one of our actions (and later, every thought) will be tracked by somebody. Government, maybe, ya think? And if we eat too much [fill in the blank] or drink too much [fill in the blank] and fail to exercise enough, we’ll be cut off from single-payer healthcare, hauled before a death panel and sent home.
My father’s father was born in 1880 and died in 1980. Every day he ate bacon, fried eggs, and biscuits with molasses for breakfast.
The second amendment was written as a bulwark against tyrants who would meddle with our meat. If Uncle Sam thinks he can nab food off my dinner plate he’s got another think coming. Brothers, sisters, grab your assault rifle and fire up the grill. Wars a’ comin’. A baconless America is not America. Make the founders proud.
Or Cruz missiles. :)
Take my bacon? Fighting words…..
When they send the blue helmet troopers into our neighborhoods to seize pork products out of the hands of innocent children then, then, then we will know we have been betrayed. America will be lost.
We need to fight all forms of bacon control. Build the hot dog cannons. Prepare the deep fryers to pour from the battlements. Stockpile the lard grenades. Sharpen the meat shredders.
They will know they have been in a fight. And right tasty too.
Guess what I’m making for breakfast this morning?
Mmmmmmm, bacon!
(I do it the easy way, on a cookie sheet in the oven at 400… then pour off the hot grease into a safe container like an old tin can and wash the cookie sheet while it’s still hot…. so easy, so tasty…)
I’m willing to volunteer for the clinical trial. Include pastrami while you’re putting the package together.
Well, I actually save all the grease in a mason jar, not an old tin can, and we had scrambled eggs a la my nine year old son. Papa Toad does not like his eggs in bacon grease so we don’t do it that way here at Toad Hall.
But I do like your idea. It reminds me of my favorite breakfast place in the Bronx. My sister and I used to get breakfast there after Sunday Mass… mmmmm….
I was going to write a long witty response to Rob’s excellent post, but I decided to eat a BLT instead.
I’ll have to read this later because I ‘m on my way to the kitchen to make bacon and eggs.
And, a waist is a terrible thing to mind.
Did anyone actually read deep into this report? I’m curious to know how many pages in I’d have to go until the phrase “climate change” comes up.
Tim, when researchers are reporting data for clinical trials of cancer drugs, any effect that is not at least double (in other words, 100%) is thrown out because the base is small, so the impact is even smaller- in other words, miniscule.
The effects here are reported as +18% or +17% depending on whether the subject is processed or red meat (per consistent 50g or 100g dosing, respectively). In other words, the effect appears to be lower than that of beer (a big news story from a couple of years ago) or having an abortion (which is close to 50% increase in risk, but, because of the basic small risk, not considered very risky; this has never been and will never be a big news story, for obvious reasons).
It looks as though this is just another part of the anti-red meat campaign being waged because cows are Bad For Our Environment, Because They Use A Lot Of Water And Worsen Climate Change.
And Fart.
There is another way to go. Instead of eliminating all of the domesticated animals we could kill all the wild animals instead.
If this doesn’t get us out of the UN, nothing will . . .
Yes! Why should all of these unregulated creatures be allowed to roam freely, eliminating on natural plants and eating each other!?
I found this in a search of the effect of the decision on commodity meat prices.
I’ll go with nothing will.
OK, for the folks who asked for a take-down of the WHO study, this one by a fellow I respect a lot should do the trick:
I ate steak for lunch, as I do most days.
Was it a grilled steak? Did you eat it sitting near a sun-filled window, while breathing air? I say live on the edge.
From a noted biochemist who has looked into the meat=cancer question:
Lies, damn lies, and statistics. Data is science, adjustments are art, at best; fraud, at worst.
OK, here’s what you were all waiting for (from a 1998 paper):
So eat your bacon. It’s for the children!
(Btw, these rats were injected with “azoxymethane … a potent carcinogen used to induce colon cancer in rats and mice.” So the bacon was literally protecting them.)
Were they wrapped in the bacon?