82
im okay with not living to 100 at this point, life is short, and id like it to be shorter.
this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2025
82 points (84.7% liked)
science
19983 readers
510 users here now
A community to post scientific articles, news, and civil discussion.
rule #1: be kind
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
There are some very useful things you can do with this mindset
sorry, im canadian. and i talk a lot of shit about the president so its not like i can cross the boarder. but i respect the hustle.
you won’t live longer, it’ll just seem longer.
I'd like to be sealed in a sous vide bag, that way I can be perpetually protected from anything that tastes good and live forever.
Then you'd have to worry about micro plastics.
Seems particularly bad for the average USA fast food diet. People in the USA love soda, fried food and processed meat.
Habitual consumption of even small amounts of processed meat, sugary drinks, and trans fatty acids...
Followed by
The data showed that people who ate as little as one hot dog a day ...
As little as one hot dog a day? I eat like one every few months. How many hot dogs is the average American eating daily?
I would be really surprised if most people average one a week. But that doesn't mean it's not happening.
And it's known that more than 2 - 3 times meat a week is unhealthy.
Which reminds me. I need to start eating chicken again. Rn I have a rotating menu of fish, tofu, beef.
You don't have a daily dog? What else would you eat after dinner?
No hot dog surprise cereal either, apparently!
I think "hot dog" was used as an example here. A hot dog has around 50 grams of meat (1.8 oz).
I feel like the word Safe is being stretched really far here.
Like at this level, getting out of bed isn't Safe.
Walking through a park isn't Safe.
And that level of Unsafeness, is functionally meaningless.
Like... is it written to excite anxiety?
Getting a colorectal cancer probability in a lifetime is about 0.04, eating hotdog adds 8% to it or ~0.003. I like how precisely we can measure it using regular statistics, but what does it tell to a human being? To me it tells nothing about hotdogs
I guess the point is that it shows the correlation between processed food and cancer is statistically significant. As in there is definitely a link, and this meta analysis shows good evidence this link exists. Even if the impact is small.
As for the day to day impact of this study, I'm not sure there is one. Processed food is already on WHOs list of things that definitely cause cancer.
Getting a colorectal cancer probability in a lifetime is about 0.04, eating hotdog adds 8% to it or ~0.003.
Depending on the average amount of processed meats eaten, it could also show not eating a hot dog every day will reduce your risk of cancer by about that much. It's probably only important in the cumulative though. When we have studies like this for many foods, you could put together a diet that reduces your chance of cancer by 20 or 30%, say. But one food's impact like this is probably only important to scientists.
So getting back to your original question:
Like... is it written to excite anxiety?
Yes. Anxiety drives clicks which drives revenue.
It’s probably only important in the cumulative though. When we have studies like this for many foods, you could put together a diet that reduces your chance of cancer by 20 or 30%, say.
I don't think that quite transfers, epidemiology is very weak, it only surfaces associates which is a good point to do a interventional trial but that is rarely done. The core problem with these studies is that to isolate variables they have to make a model of that variable in isolation, this relies on both assumptions of the model maker, accuracy of data, and is very vulnerable to p-hacking. Model assumptions that a hamburger and fries counts as meat, but not vegetable (potato) also impact the outcomes.
The large observational food surveys conducted typically have a 1-4 year questionnaire about how many servings of different food someone ate. Once every 4 years leaves lots of room open for forgetfulness.
There is a huge problem with healthy user confounders, people trying to follow all the modern health advice are going to skew results - not because all of the advice is correct, but some of it is. If someone exercises regularly, practices mindfulness, avoids processed foods, avoids meat - Are their improvements due to any single variable, yet on a food survey they get over represented because of these exclusionary behaviors.
We also have multiple different epidemiology studies covering the same topics and getting different results, that probably means we are focusing on the wrong question, it's noisy.
From my reading its far more likely the modern epidemic of chronic disease is caused by the introduction of excessive carbohydrates in processed foods, the novel addition of industrial oils (again processed foods) into the food supply - they account for 30%!!! of the average westerners average calorie intake, exposure to food contaminates from agrochemicals such as pesticides. The metabolic context of people filling out these surveys is a critical part that is being omitted.
In the following graphs notice how the incidence is very high in countries with traditionally low meat consumption like india? This indicates the hypothesis generated from the abstract paper isn't asking the right question.
example graphs
CVD 
Type 2 Diabetes 
My point is that you can follow every bit of advice from associative food surveys, but since the wrong questions are being focused on, your outcomes wont be as good as you hope. Quite frankly epidemiology is more about publicity and marketing then being part of the scientific process.
If you haven't read about the Metabolic Theory of Cancer I highly recommend giving it a read. It's a much more compelling model, and explains the surge of cancer since 1900, as well as actionable steps to reduce incidence (reduce sugar and inflammation).
Like I said, it may be a scientifically interesting study, but the broader audience can't take anything from it but anxiety.
a diet that reduces your chance of cancer by 20 or 30%, say.
That would be significant, but probably not today. The lifetime risk of dying as a pedestrian in a car accident is around 1 in 100, so mitigating other risks is not an option for now
The title is also shit, leaving put sugars etc and only putting forward processed Meat.
It would be more useful to correlate this with other common risks, like PFAS exposure, genetic factors, etc
What an insane headline.
First meta data analysis.
Second, “This current research has shown, yet again and consistent with prior research … that to achieve health gains it is best to avoid or minimize the habitual consumption of each of processed meat, sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) and industrially produced trans fatty acids (TFAs),”
So don't eat a ton of shit every day. Got it. The CNN version of super size me propaganda rage bait.
You're shitty at science and spreading propaganda. Feel bad about yourself.
You had me up until that last part
being shitty at science and spreading propaganda is pretty much ancel keyes, who played a big part in wrecking the country's dietary health decades ago
no amount of bad feelings could make up for the damage he did
edit: further reading https://academic.oup.com/jhmas/article/63/2/139/772615?login=false
see also: antivaxxers. shitty science. propaganda. irreparable damage