Colorectal cancer is common, 5% of men get it, usually when very old, jumps to 6% with two pieces of bacon every day for rest of life.
HEALTH & DIET
Eating bacon raises cancer risks, only slightly
29/10/2015
Justin Fox, Bloomberg View
You have of course heard the sad news about bacon. As the World Health Organisation's (WHO's) International Agency for Research on Cancer put it on Monday in a news release:
"The experts concluded that each 50-gramme portion of processed meat eaten daily increases the risk of colorectal cancer [bowel cancer] by 18%."
TWO PIECES OF BACON, EVERYDAY, FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE
How much is 50 grammes of processed meat? In bacon terms it's about two slices. Just to be clear, it isn't that eating two pieces of bacon will increase your colorectal cancer risk by 18%.
It's that eating two pieces of bacon every day for the rest of your life will.
But here's the important question that isn't directly addressed in the pages and pages of information released on Monday:
What's the risk of colorectal cancer to begin with?