The World Health Organization Has Bad News for Bacon Lovers

Kristin Appenbrink
Kristin Appenbrink
Kristin is the co-founder of Part Time Vegan and Silent Book Club. As a former editor at Real Simple, she is compulsively organized and loves solving people's problems. She has a weakness for desserts, especially ice cream.
updated May 1, 2019
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Bad news for bacon lovers and sausage lovers: The World Health Organization (WHO) has officially stated that processed meats — bacon, ham, sausage, and the like — do cause cancer, and red meat is “probably carcinogenic.”

But it’s not the whole story.

Before you swear off all animal products and become a raw foodist, note that the WHO report did mention the health benefits of red meat as well.

The report simply recommends cutting back on red and processed meats. And while the numbers are astounding — they estimate that 34,000 cancer deaths every year could be attributed to processed meats, they still pale in comparison to the 1 million deaths that can be attributed to smoking, and the 600,000 deaths that can be attributed to alcohol.

So once again, the results of this study aren’t quite as alarmist as they might seem, but they do definitively link processed meats to cancer.

→ Read more: Processed meats do cause cancer – WHO from BBC

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