6th March 2019
processed meat

Deadly food: Is eating bacon as bad as smoking?

Deadly food. Is bacon the new smoking? Eating 2 slices of bacon a day increases your risk of bowel cancer by 17%. Alarming statistics like this abound in the media, suggesting that eating food X will increase your risk of cancer, stroke or dementia by what can seem like a huge percentage. Similar stats regarding how food Y (usually something green or purple like kale or blueberries) will decrease your risk of disease by an equally large percentage lead many to (erroneously) conclude that “food is medicine”. While it is true to say that the way we eat and generally live our lives can influence our risk of disease, the way nutrition is portrayed in the media is highly misleading. […]