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submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[-] [email protected] 3 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

The data showed that people who ate as little as one hot dog a day when it comes to processed meats had an 11% greater risk of type 2 diabetes and a 7% increased risk of colorectal cancer than those who didn’t eat any.

Now do the data for Iberian ham. Isn't there a confounding factor of income? Or health-conciousness at least

[-] [email protected] 3 points 14 hours ago

CNN seems to be under the misbelief that I want to live longer. 46 is already too long.

[-] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago

Who the fuck is eating "as little as one Hotdog per day"?

WHO IS EATING TUBE STEAK EVERY DAY?!?

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

So if I eat 1 gram of processed meat, am I gonna die or something?

[-] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago

Eventually, yes

[-] [email protected] 14 points 1 day ago

So… if we eat an unrealistic amount of processed meat we will get sick?

Who knew?

Next they’ll tell us that swallowing even 1 mouthful of hydrogen peroxide mouthwash is unsafe.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Doesn't hydrogen peroxide just degrade into water and oxygen? How is it harmful?

[-] [email protected] 4 points 20 hours ago

Swallowing it can make you very sick, yet it’s a safe and effective mouthwash if you have gum disease, or any other infection.

Best to just play it safe and rinse with warm salt water.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

when it spontaneously degrades, yes, it turns into tame water and healthy oxygen, but when it touches organic matter (your skin, tongue, mouth, etc) the oxygen directly reacts with the carbon atoms to make CO2, effectively "burning" away your tissues very slowly.

Usually, you don't notice that because you use store-bought 3% peroxide, but chemists regularly use the much more powerful 35% peroxide, which gives you nasty burns

peroxide burn

also, fun fact, some cells produce hydrogen peroxide as a waste product, so nature has evolved the catalase enzyme to break it down, and that's why you see bubbling when using it on a scar but not on skin, because that enzyme is only inside you and your blood

[-] [email protected] 1 points 20 hours ago

I see, so oxygen is leached much faster and causes damage via hyperoxidation. Thank you for the writeup!

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)
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[-] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago

as little as one hot dog a day

That is a lot processed meat to be eating if its every single day. Who is buying more than a pack of sausages per person each week? Also hot dog sausages are surely some of the worst sausages for being highly processed. Don't forget about the strange bread used in hot dogs too. That must have a shitload of stuff added to it or it would be stale and mouldy. Bread shouldn't still be fresh days later.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

also celery salt, or juice in those bougie organic hot dogs, in places like whole foods is all nitrates too. nitrate/nitrite salts have distinctive taste and smell. many orgnaic brands might have celery salt. your safe if the ingredients isnt mentioning any salts or celery.

when your heating up nitrates, it forms things like nitrosamine which have been implicated in lab studies of causing cancer in model organisms.

smoked and UNCURED meat might still have the same nitrates in them.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

So what I'm hearing is we just need to return to tradition and start curing our own meats in our backyard smokehouses?

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Curing (removing moisture from food by means of salt) is a distinct process from smoking (adding smoke to food as well as removing moisture via heat). Curing with nitrite and nitrate based salts (sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite) is what’s been implicated in cancer.

Smoking meat is much more complicated from a chemistry perspective. Different types of wood, different temperatures, moisture content, salt content, and cooking durations can all affect the concentrations of carcinogenic compounds in the food. For example, softwoods (such as pine) tend to produce a lot of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), a known class of carcinogens, but thankfully softwood is undesirable as a smoke wood anyway so is rarely used.

Smoking technique can also dramatically affect the result. Poor smoking technique allows the wood to smoulder at a lower temperature, producing a harsher smoke with more carcinogenic, toxic, and bitter compounds. Expert smoking technique uses a smaller, hotter fire which produces a much cleaner smoke that also results in better flavour.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

TL;DR: Cancer is coming for us all.

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[-] [email protected] 122 points 2 days ago

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?

[-] [email protected] 31 points 2 days ago
[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

I talk about this one all of the time. Such a classic.

[-] [email protected] 40 points 2 days ago

You don't have a daily dog? What else would you eat after dinner?

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[-] [email protected] 20 points 1 day ago

I guess 7 hotdogs a day is a little high...

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[-] [email protected] 21 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

What is the definition of “processed” here? blended meat? high salt %? specific preservatives? artificial casing?

[-] [email protected] 14 points 1 day ago

Also what definition of "safe".

My grandpa eats at least one burger per week and he's turning 90 next year. So obviously "safe" isn't a measure of imminent and near term death?

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

As always, unsafe never means 100% chance to kill. Not wearing s seatbelt while driving is unsafe, but it doesn't mean that you will not be able to survive to 90 is you're lucky.

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[-] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Only $209 per year for access to the content

Or

Similar research from around a year ago:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/378589731_Ultra-processed_food_exposure_and_adverse_health_outcomes_umbrella_review_of_epidemiological_meta-analyses/

"Introduction Ultra-processed foods, as defined using the Nova food classification system, encompass a broad range of ready to eat products, including packaged snacks, carbonated soft drinks, instant noodles, and ready- made meals. 1 These products are characterised as industrial formulations primarily composed of chemically modified substances extracted from foods, along with additives to enhance taste, texture, appearance, and durability, with minimal to no inclusion of whole foods. 2 "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_classification

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

Only $209 per year for access to the content

Fuck academia and fuck publishers

Here's the full pdf, for free, for everyone

https://files.catbox.moe/ia9f3k.pdf

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

What a vague definition that totally misses the specifics that matter. There's an overwhelming variety of food additives.

Do you know where they eat some of the most processed food in the world? Japan. Some of the highest life expectancy in the world.

What are they doing differently? Without knowing what exactly the commonalities are, there is no value to this study.

[-] [email protected] 60 points 2 days ago

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

[-] [email protected] 35 points 2 days ago

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.

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[-] [email protected] 26 points 2 days ago

im okay with not living to 100 at this point, life is short, and id like it to be shorter.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago

"I would never commit suicide, but I would like to die naturally soon." - Zoltan Kaszas

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this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2025
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