After a major liver surgery, the author recounts their experience in the ICU, where a simple ham sandwich triggers a realization about the dangers of processed meat and its connection to cancer. They reflect on their cancer journey and the alarming statistics of processed meat consumption in Australia, pushing for awareness and action.
A sharp, irritating and piercing beeping noise wakes me rudely. Is it the doorbell? I’d better get up. Why isn’t the dog barking? What time is it?
If cancer is indeed a battle, as it’s so often described, then I felt like I was nursing my wounds in the trenches after a desperate and brutal push forward over the top.
I started to see how buying mystery-mixed ham and cured meats from the deli means you are shopping amid a backdrop of a long and dark history in which wild guesses, bullied governments and industrial-scale greed are firmly wrapped up with your charcuterie favourites. “You have at least four or five lesions ... so ... I’m afraid that means it’s officially stage-four bowel cancer, but ... um ... don’t worry, I’m pretty sure it’s all treatable,” he told us, perhaps in a kind attempt to make the bad news good for the weekend.
consumer of processed meats, I said to myself, over and over. I’d never liked the look of those plastic packets of ham and usually preferred chicken, cheese or salmon. But then I really started to think about it more deeply. I certainly had the time. Then I thought back with a growing sense of dread to all those trips to Bunnings and how I would be occasionally lured in by those tempting, sizzling snags neatly packed into a single, white slice of cheap bread. Oh, the soft, caramelised onions. The mustard. A warming, satisfying late lunch for the whole family, for the price of a few gold coins. Bargain.
Finally, the report’s authors advised: “As processed meat consumption is a modifiable risk factor, health promotion activities should include specific advice on lowering processed meat consumption.”estimated that the number of total deaths that could be put down to a diet high in processed meat in 2013 was an astonishing 644,000. What the hell?
According to WHO analysis, a 50-gram portion of processed meat eaten each day increases the risk of colorectal cancer by 18 per cent. declared it as “probably carcinogenic” and placed it in the Group 2A list, joining items like glyphosate, the active ingredient in many weedkillers. But with Australians well known for being among the world’s biggest consumers of meat, the minister perhaps could have vowed to at least investigate properly, to find out the facts first and perhaps order an official review. Instead, he decided to brutishly brush off the extensive research by the leading health body in the world and make his own rapid conclusions.
In the end, it was only the cancer charities that tried their best to spread the message. Here in Australia, thestates: “About 2600 cases of bowel cancer diagnosed each year in Australian adults can be attributed to eating red and processed meat.” Yet, their audience, of course, was likely to be made up of those already diagnosed, so reaching millions of other people to encourage them to change their diets was close to impossible.
Food & Nutrition CANCER PROCESSED MEAT DIET HEALTH AUSTRALIA
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