Eating processed meats like bacon and ham is linked to a greater risk of breast cancer, a new review of research found.
Consuming these processed meats was associated with a 9 percent increased risk of breast cancer compared to people who eat the lowest amounts, 0 to 2 grams a day.
Previous studies have identified this link between processed meat consumption and cancer, but they frequently “generated inconsistent results,” the researchers wrote in the review, published in the International Journal of Cancer. Because of that, they analyzed 20 studies to identify any association between the foods and breast cancer.
However, lead author Dr. Maryam Farvid of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health emphasized that the actual risk from processed meats was “very small,” and that people should not panic. Rather, he suggests cutting down on red and processed meat consumption.
“Previous works linked increased risk of some types of cancer to higher processed meat intake, and this recent meta-analysis suggests that processed meat consumption may also increase breast cancer risk. Therefore, cutting down processed meat seems beneficial for the prevention of breast cancer,” Farvid said in a press release.
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The research is also in line with the World Health Organization’s 2015 decision to classify processed meats as a Group 1 carcinogen, based on previous evidence that they can cause cancer.
But it is important to note, as people did in 2015 with the release of the WHO’s decision, that while processed meat is found to increase the risk of breast cancer by 9 percent, that number is fairly low. In comparison, smoking a little more than a pack of cigarettes a day increases the risk of cancer by 2,400.
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