this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2025
349 points (92.5% liked)

News

30835 readers
2800 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil

Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.

2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.

Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.

3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.

Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.

4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.

Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.

5. Only recent news is allowed.

Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.

6. All posts must be news articles.

No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.

7. No duplicate posts.

If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.

8. Misinformation is prohibited.

Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.

9. No link shorteners.

The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.

10. Don't copy entire article in your post body

For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
rjc@lemmy.world
Thekingoflorda@lemmy.world
Tenthrow@lemmy.world
JonsJava@lemmy.world
gedaliyah@lemmy.world
little_cow@lemmy.world
jeffw@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
admiralpatrick@lemmy.world
jordanlund@lemmy.world
349
There is no safe amount of processed meat to eat, according to new research (www.cnn.com)
submitted 1 week ago by return2ozma@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world
123 comments fedilink hide all child comments
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Krudler@lemmy.world 64 points 6 days ago (9 children)

I'm not a nutritional epidemiologist.

But I've started to get into learning about it in the last few months.

It's really starting to feel like this is a giant bullshit field, and as much as they are trying to find useful results, there's something severely wrong with how they seem to arbitrarily assign causality and correlation.

In a contrived example: "People who live near power lines have more cancer" - "No, poor people live near power lines because they're poor, and poor people have more cancer"

What are the kind of people that eat processed hot dogs? I can promise you they are not millionaires. I can promise you it's not people who can afford filet mignon but decide to have a steamed hot dog. It's not people who work out and take care of their bodies. It's not people who cook.

So when a study is done like this, what answer are you actually getting? probably finding out that the type of people who eat processed meat are more prone to these conditions for a variety of considerations that are just totally left out of the analysis.

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 9 points 6 days ago

Basically: wanna live healthy and forever? Just become a billionaire! If you don't want to live healthy then I guess that's your choice to make.

[–] swelter_spark@reddthat.com 10 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Well, you're right and I'm surprised I've never thought of this before.

[–] Krudler@lemmy.world 5 points 5 days ago

The EMF from power lines was a real mind virus that went around when I was a teenager!

I've been alive too long and have seen this pattern play out again, and again, and again. Feeling a little sad right now, actually.

For another example: all my life the common sense accepted wisdom, supported by real dermatologists was that to keep the likelihood of skin cancer to a minimum there is zero known healthy level of sun exposure. Well that's all out the f'king window in 2025 because we now know the deleterious effects of insufficient sun exposure are vastly more severe compared to an increased morbidity for types of skin cancer.

I don't want to be mr critical, but... there's something wrong in our whole approach to these "studies" and I don't know what fixes it. Any experts wanna help describe what I'm getting at with the right technical language?

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] whoisearth@lemmy.ca 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

We have collectively forgotten that correlation != causation

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (6 replies)
[–] RickyRigatoni@retrolemmy.com 11 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

publishing this article three days before independance day is terrorism

edit: two days. Somehow I thought the fourth of july was on the fifth.

[–] pyre@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago

i usually use a little mnemonic device to remember exact dates for holidays. for fourth of July i try to match the last word with the month of the year and the first word with the day of the month.

[–] dodgeflailimpose@lemmy.zip 21 points 6 days ago (4 children)

sorry but one hotdog a day is not a small nor moderate amount.

[–] skisnow@lemmy.ca 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

What I liked was their phrasing: "people who ate as little as one hot dog a day"

I'm assuming it's just the average though, I generally ingest my 7 hotdogs for Monday morning breakfast, and then eat healthy the rest of the week.

[–] EtAl_isGitch@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

One hotdog a day is little compared to the 30+ hot dogs day they are force feeding those poor albino rats.

[–] Cornpop@lemmy.world 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Right lol that’s an insane amount of hot dogs

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] tacosplease@lemmy.world 13 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Jokes on them. I do tons of unsafe shit, and probably only one of those things is going to kill me. There will be no accountability for 99.9% of the bad behavior, including unregulated hotdog intake. Suckers.

[–] DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

For me, it's about the quality of life before I die, not which shitty thing I'm willingly doing to my body that ends up "winning".

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] chunes@lemmy.world 20 points 6 days ago (1 children)

7% increase of an already small chance in exchange for 1 hotdog/day doesn't sound that bad to me.

[–] ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 19 points 6 days ago (1 children)

It never seems that bad unless you're in that small percent. Cancer's a damned awful way to die.

[–] kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world 35 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (4 children)

Sure but there are a ton of things, genetic, environmental, dietary, neurochemical, etc. that can contribute to the development of cancer. You can do literally everything right and end up in the exact same place as someone who did all the wrong things because the causes are innumerable and many are literally unavoidable.

Would I regret my choices if I got cancer after I did all the things the studies say would increase my odds? Of course I would. Would I regret my choices if did everything "right" and still got cancer? Of course I would. But that's because being in that position inherently biased you against your past. If I did all the wrong things I would regret that I indulged too much, and if I did all the right things I would regret that I never really indulged at all and enjoyed life fully. Either way you got shafted. You're damned if you do, damned if you don't.

But to me it's better to just live intentionally but without having this constant concern about every single thing I eat, drink, or breath maybe, possibly, eventually contributing to developing cancer. Like I'm not about to start smoking, I rarely drink, I try to eat enough veggies, etc. because those things have much more tangible direct consequences that I'm mindful of, and I'm not about to eat a hotdog every day mostly because I'm a really good cook and that sounds sad as fuck. But the next time I do eat a hotdog, a salami, or a Reuben sandwich, I promise you that no part of my mind is going to be worrying that it will give me cancer. Constant dread is its own form of cancer and life's too short and uncertain to live with that shit 24/7.

[–] JigglySackles@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago

I know these things logically. I wish I could embed them more emphatically so that articles like this don't kick up my anxiety the way they do. Thanks for putting this comment to remind me to come down from the ledge of needless dread and worry.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] LordCrom@lemmy.world 8 points 6 days ago

Ya well in the 70s and 80s this was what we as kids were given to eat.

I'm paying for that now

[–] DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I felt shitty, I made changes to my diet and exercise, I feel much better now.

It doesn't take research to convince me that processed foods, especially industrial, large scale, profit-above-all-else, processed food is bad for me.

These results shouldn't surprise anyone, and I don't think they do. But, people will find excuses to keep doing unhealthy things they enjoy, and that is their prerogative.

[–] KingPorkChop@lemmy.ca 3 points 5 days ago

Some of this food isn't great for you, but if you only have it now and then it shouldn't be a problem.

Moderation and a diverse diet is key.

[–] hperrin@lemmy.ca 14 points 6 days ago (3 children)

Considering humans have been eating processed meats like these for centuries, I think I’ll take my chances.

[–] turtlesareneat@discuss.online 21 points 6 days ago (3 children)

And our rates of intestinal cancer have been rising steadily to the point where now it's a common killer, so we've become afraid of it in our quest to live long, pain-free lives.

Things change as we learn. Why we don't use lead in our pipes anymore. Safe, biocompatible plastic only.

[–] hperrin@lemmy.ca 7 points 6 days ago (2 children)

If the rates have been rising, wouldn’t that prove it’s not processed meats like these? It would be something that’s being introduced at a steady rate lately, not something that’s been around for centuries.

[–] jnod4@lemmy.ca 6 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Nitrites have being slowly "introduced" at a steady rate lately

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] ieGod@lemmy.zip 6 points 6 days ago

It is likely many factors at once but it's also important not to assume causation where there is a correlation. Keep in mind also our mechanism of detection is better now than it's ever been.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] JeremyHuntQW12@lemmy.world 12 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Nitrites only date back to the middle of the 19th century.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] madlian@lemmy.cafe 8 points 6 days ago

Yeah, I try not to make it my entire diet, but… no pepperoni? Why live?

[–] Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 15 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Dang, you mean to tell me that animal refuse blended into mush and saturated with salt is bad for us?!

[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 27 points 6 days ago (3 children)

Eh, "refuse" makes sausage sound worse than it is. In the modern world anyplace with a food inspection system will typically see sausage made from cuts of meat that are perfectly edible but don't meet the grading standards likely to sell on the shelf , or the excess pieces of muscle left over after breaking primal cuts down into smaller pieces. No one wants to buy USDA certified Meh grade steak, or a palm sized wedge of uneven thickness. So they get sent off to make hamburger, sausage, and various canned or commercial meat products that don't need to be pretty.

Processed meat also includes much more benign seeming foods, like sandwich meat, ground meats, and bacon. We've known for a while that eating meat, and more so red meat, is a risk for colon problems. Red meats are more likely to be processed and therefore cheap and salty.

The new thing the study adds is that there isn't a lower bound. For a lot of things there's a quantity that isn't associated with any issues, and it's only when you go above that limit that the risk goes up.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] hperrin@lemmy.ca 13 points 6 days ago

Refuse? Why do you think processed meat is animal refuse?

[–] bradorsomething@ttrpg.network 3 points 5 days ago

Can I have a little sausage, as a treat?

[–] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)

So I have to eat raw meat?

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Colonel_Panic_@eviltoast.org 2 points 5 days ago

I could sure go for some Ivermectin squeezed on top of a hotdog and washed down with some motor oil about now.

[–] Leet@lemmy.zip 4 points 5 days ago

Are the Germans dying in droves due to this?

[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Im so screwed.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›