介绍:
Michael Butterworth: The World Health Organization's cancer agency has said that processed meats can lead to colon and other cancers, and that red meat is another likely cause of the disease. Researchers from the WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer have released an evaluation of over eight hundred studies from several continents about meat and cancer. Based on the evaluation, processed meat is classified as carcinogenic to humans, and is put under the same category as tobacco, asbestos and diesel fumes. However, this isn't said to mean that processed meat is as dangerous as smoking. Well, I must admit that my heart sank a little bit when I heard this story because I personally do love red meat. But, Brian, I wondered if you could start by just telling us what exactly is processed meat? What does this consist of, this category?
Brian Kopczynski: Sure. So a lot of things that you're going to think of first would be things like sausage, bacon, hot dogs and beef jerky. It's anything that's…
MB: Delicious?
BK: Perhaps there. Ah, certainly things that are smoked, things that are cured, or have salts or other preservatives added to them. So, if it's just like, meat that, you know, you go slaughter a cow and then, you just, you know, cut that up and you cook it, that's, that's not processed meat. If it's add, add[ed] through this extra, well, obviously processing of some kind that means it's [processed] meat. Of course, a lot of these also are red meats as well, so potentially a double whammy here.
MB: And so, I'm just wondering how accurate these headlines [can] really be. Is there an element of scare-mongering here? You know “red meat causes cancer” and I just, I mean, I'm not sure really how much I believe, how much I believe all this, to be quite honest.
BK: How much you believe or how much you don't want to believe?
MB: Well, well, quite. But, I mean, how accurate are these headlines do you think?
BK: Well, so it depends on the headlines you look at, if it's saying, if you're seeing something that tells you, red, eating red meat will give you cancer, that's obviously scare-mongering. That's, you know, it might do that, but there, no one is actually scientifically suggesting that is going to happen. What it's saying here, what, what they've said, is that, they've determined that it is carcinogenic, for example processed meats, like things in tobacco, do cause cancer, which does not mean that, like smoking cigarettes, if you do this, you have a very high likelihood of getting cancer. It’s just, it is, you have a certain likelihood by eating processed meats, and for red meats they think there's probably a link there. They're not certain, but they think red meats probably do cause cancer at some level as well.
MB: And I wonder Wu You, what you make of all this?
Wu You: I strongly protest. I'm a meat lover. And I need to protect about that because meat, especially red meat is still a good source of protein, and also B vitamins and minerals, such as like iron and zinc. I also read other reports which says, one minute of climbing stairs can extend the lifetime of four seconds. So does it mean that I can eat more barbecues and bacons, and at the same time climbing stairs to counterbalance the harm that was caused by the meat?
MB: I would like to think so.
BK: Yeah, yeah, you just, every, every time you need to eat some of that you just make sure you eat as you're going up a flight of stairs, right? Yeah, that, that might do something for [it].
