Did you hear WHO says meat is bad for you?
Who?
That’s right.
What’s right?
That WHO says meat is bad for you.
Who does?
Yes. WHO does.
Hey, I asked you first.
WHO, the World Health Organization recently dropped (read: gently placed) a bombshell (read: not a bombshell) that a steady diet of processed meats can cause health problems. In related news, it turns out that smoking cigarettes can cause lung cancer, drinking alcohol can cause impaired judgment, and sticking your head into a beehive can cause puffiness around the eyes.
Uh, exactly who — or whom — needed WHO to say this?
Consider the pig. Pudgy and cute in its own way, especially when wearing a red unitard and bounding around the woods with Christopher Robin. Or serious and symbolic, flying above the Battersea Power Station on a Pink Floyd album cover.
But it’s not the most hygienic animal you could ever sink your teeth into. Fair or not, that’s what happens when you spend all day rolling around in your own feces: You get stereotyped as, well, a pig.
Remember, you aren’t only what you eat. You’re also what what-you-eat eats. And pigs don’t have the dietary discretion of a koala bear or an Olsen twin. They swallow anything plopped in front of their mouths. They eat like, well, a pig.
The WHO won’t be fooled. Its researchers found such a strong, causative link between ingesting processed meats and contracting cancer, particularly of the colon, they labeled processed meats “carcinogenic to humans.” Unprocessed red meat was called probably carcinogenic.
This isn’t semantics; it’s serious. “C” is the scarlet letter in the medical community; it’s the same term used to characterize tobacco and asbestos.
So, how much of a bad thing is bad? According to the WHO report, people who eat 50 grams of processed meat per day are 18 percent more likely than they otherwise would be to contract cancer. Processed meats are those preserved through salting, smoking, curing, corning or jerking. All meat, of course, can be jerked; however, it typically is done to beef and pork products so they taste better and stay fresh longer.
But a little perspective: 50 grams per day is two strips of bacon or two slices of ham. Every. Single. Day. Which is a lot, unless of course you’re Homer Simpson or Dr. Atkins.
And 18 percent more likely, while significant over a large population, doesn’t make a huge difference to the individual. According to the Cancer Research Center in the United Kingdom, 6 percent of people will have colon cancer at some point in their lives. If pigging out on pig increases your probability by 18 percent, it means you now have a risk of 7 percent. (You multiply, not add.)
So eating a hot dog isn’t a death sentence? No. If it were, that Kobayashi guy would be wolfing them down at the big Nathan’s in the sky.
The message is moderation. Have one sausage, not a chain of links. Have a pull of jerky, not the family feed bag. And yes, have a hamburger, just not the one where if you finish it — and live to tell — you get your picture on the wall.
And if all else fails, listen to the Chick-fil-A cows: Eat Mor Chikin.
Roger Snow is a senior vice president at Scientific Games.