So the World Health Organisations’s (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has published its report on red and processed meat and decided that they are carcinogenic as tobacco smoke. Naturally I am extremely puzzled as, for 7 million years or so before the onset of agriculture (about 10,000 years ago), meat was all we ate (bar a few leaves and berries) and yet we are, undeniably, still here. I have serious doubts that if every single human being had smoked 20 a day for the last seven million years there would be any of us here at all. So I rushed to the WHO’s website to find the research, to discover it was published in the Lancet only (access denied). Failing that I went straight to the IARC’s website to discover the source data of this new and important study to be greeted with this:

Looks like their server hasn’t eaten enough red meat…

Never mind. To allay any immediate fears, here is a sensible info graphic from Cancer Research UK that shows that while the evidence may be the same, the risk is very different.

So in the absence of any real data, and without access to what the report actually says, here is a quote from the furious, if obviously partisan, North American Meat Institute said defining red meat as a cancer hazard defied common sense.

“It was clear, sitting in the IARC meeting, that many of the panellists were aiming for a specific result despite old, weak, inconsistent, self-reported intake data,” said Betsy Booren, the institute’s vice-president of scientific affairs. “They tortured the data to ensure a specific outcome.”

I have a strange sense of deja vue… where’s my low fat muffin?

27/10/15 – Here’s a link to an explanation from Wired magazine via Paleo Mag via Rob Woolf. As it says, don’t be throwing out your bacon just yet:

http://www.wired.com/2015/10/who-does-bacon-cause-cancer-sort-of-but-not-really/

28/10/15 – In case you were wondering, after it’s hysterical headlines on Monday, the Guardian has helpfully published the full list of the 116 Group 1 carcinogens, including bacon: 

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/oct/28/116-things-that-can-give-you-cancer-list

Is that sometimes you get a surprise! Like some very, very big zucchini!!

Now all I have to do is work out what to do with them 🙂

Sometimes of course you get exactly what you hoped for. Not bad for English grapes!

The UK Government and Public Health England (the government’s independent advisor on health matters) have given in to pressure and released the delayed report on sugar intake in England and what we should do about it, if anything.  The Guardian newspaper has got an early leaked copy and has published it here:

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/oct/22/sugar-report-delayed-jeremy-hunt-tax-radical-action-obesity

The eight recommendations are:

1. Reduce and rebalance the number and type of price promotions in all retail outlets including supermarkets and convenience stores and the out-of-home sector (including restaurants, cafes and takeaways).
2. Significantly reduce opportunities to market and advertise high-sugar food and drink products to children and adults across all media including digital platforms and through sponsorship.
3. The setting of a clear definition for high-sugar foods to aid with actions 1 and 2 above. Currently the only regulatory framework for doing this is via the Ofcom nutrient profiling model, which would benefit from being reviewed and strengthened.
4. Introduction of a broad, structured and transparently monitored programme of gradual sugar reduction in everyday food and drink products, combined with reductions in portion size.
5. Introduction of a price increase of a minimum of 10% to 20% on high-sugar products through the use of a tax or levy such as on full-sugar soft drinks, based on the emerging evidence of the impact of such measures in other countries.
6. Adopt, implement and monitor the government buying standards for food and catering services (GBSF) across the public sector, including national and local government and the NHS to the ensure provision and sale of healthier food and drinks in hospitals, leisure centres etc.
7. Ensure that accredited training in diet and health is routinely delivered to all of those who have opportunities to influence food choices in the catering, fitness and leisure sectors and others within local authorities.
8. Continue to raise awareness of concerns around sugar levels in the diet to the public as well as health professionals, employers, the food industry etc, encourage action to reduce intakes and provide practical steps to help people lower their own and their families’ sugar intake.

The fifth (but only the fifth) was a recommendation that the government put a levy on high-sugar foods of between 10-20% which seems like a very broad range to me and the third item is to define what those high sugar foods might be. I haven’t read the report yet but I hope that they are talking about the full range of sugars and that different sugars may be described as high in different circumstances. For example extrinsic sugars being considered “higher” than the same quantity of intrinsic sugars. We will see.

Meanwhile the UK press would never let the story get in the way of a good headline.

For the second time in six months, the UK government appears to be sitting on a report that questions (as far as we know) whether we should substantially decrease the amount of sugar in our diet.

Now I have no particular insight into why any government would want to hold up a report that may help people improve their health and lose weight. Maybe the politician responsible has noticed a problem with the research methodology or that some of the scientific evidence is unreliable. Or maybe something else is going on but in the week where we “celebrated” the first ever World Obesity Day, I think our politicians ought to be doing more, doing it better and doing it quicker.

http://www.worldobesity.org/what-we-do/action-initiative/aiprogrammes/world-obesity-day/