BACON FOREVER!

Linda would not approve of this blog

WHO do they think they are, messing with the best meal of the day??? I refer, of course, to the World Health Organization,  Unless you were climbing in the Patagonian Andes or bushwhacking through Borneo in search of hallucinogenic plants, you will have heard that WHO has just classified processed meats – and that includes bacon – as a carcinogen, thus lumping it with smoking, alcohol excess, and sniffing asbestos powder.  I heard this pronouncement  on two news broadcasts last night,  It was front-page on the highly influential Bellingham Herald this morning.  All this upset me so much that I went out for breakfast (my usual: biscuits and gravy, bacon and eggs).  On the way to the restaurant I punched the radio button – and there was Rush Limbaugh, weighing in.  (He thinks it is a liberal scam, like global warming, evolution and the existence of poverty.)  So what is an elderly carnivore to do?

Well, first of all, look at the fine print.  WHO tells me that eating plentiful amounts of processed meats (in my case, almost entirely bacon) will increase my lifetime probability of getting colorectal cancer by 18%.  Scary, no?  However – according to official health statistics the lifetime chance of dieing from this type of cancer is about 15 in 100,000 (or was, in 2012), which figures out to about 0.015%.  18% of that is a very small number: according to these statistics, eating bacon in profusion raises your risk of death from colorectal cancer to a whopping 0.018%.  I can’t speak for you, but at 82 I will damned well take my chances.

I guess it boils down to this question: do you want to live a long life eating oatmeal and yogurt, or would you prefer a  (perhaps) slightly shorter life eating bacon and eggs?

In passing, I read somewhere lately about an interview with the current oldest person in the world – about 116, I think.  She states that she has bacon and eggs every day.