The World Health Organization (WHO), has warned that processed meats, such as bacon, sausages and ham do cause cancer.
Its report said 50g of processed meat a day less than two slices of bacon increased the chance of developing colorectal cancer by 18 percent.
Meanwhile, it said red meats were “probably carcinogenic” but there was limited evidence.
The WHO did stress that meat also had health benefits.
Cancer Research UK said this was a reason to cut down rather than give up red and processed meats.
And added that an occasional bacon sandwich would do little harm.
It is the chemicals involved in the processing which could be increasing the risk of cancer.
High temperature cooking, such as on a barbeque, can also create carcinogenic chemicals.
In the UK, around six out of every 100 people get bowel cancer at some point in their lives.
If they were all had an extra 50g of bacon a day for the rest of their lives then the risk would increase by 18 percent to around seven in 100 people getting bowel cancer.
“So that’s one extra case of bowel cancer in all those 100 lifetime bacon-eaters,” argued Sir David Spiegelhalter, a risk professor from the University of Cambridge.
The WHO has come to the conclusion on the advice of its International Agency for Research on Cancer, which assesses the best available scientific evidence.
It has now placed processed meat in the same category as plutonium, but also alcohol as they definitely do cause cancer.
However, this does not mean they are equally dangerous. A bacon sandwich is not as bad as smoking.
“For an individual, the risk of developing colorectal (bowel) cancer because of their consumption of processed meat remains small, but this risk increases with the amount of meat consumed,” Dr Kurt Straif from the WHO said.
Estimates suggest 34,000 deaths from cancer every year could be down to diets high in processed meat.
That is in contrast to one million deaths from cancer caused by smoking and 600,000 attributed to alcohol each year.
Red meat does have nutritional value too and is a major source of iron, zinc and vitamin B12.
However, the WHO said there was limited evidence that 100g of red meat a day increased the risk of cancer by 17 percent.
An eight ounce steak is 225g.
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