Consumers have no beef with meat

Updated: 2016-01-08 07:56

By Shan Juan(China Daily)

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Consumers have no beef with meat
Lu Buxuan (right), founder of a pork retail chain, promotes products at a supermarket in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, on Wednesday. The chain has more than 1,000 stores in major cities, and sells the meat from 300,000 pigs each year. Last year, its sales revenue exceeded 1 billion yuan ($150 million). Long Wei / for China Daily

Global impact

According to the report, if a person eats 50 grams of processed meat every day, the risk of contracting colorectal cancer rises by 18 percent, while daily consumption of 100 grams of red meat raises the risk by 17 percent.

"In view of the large number of people who eat processed meat, the global impact on the incidence of cancer is of public health significance," Straif said.

The IARC experts considered more than 800 studies - conducted in a number of countries and among populations with varied diets - that investigated links between the incidence of more than a dozen types of cancers with the consumption of red or processed meat. The most influential evidence came from large prospective cohort studies conducted over the past 20 years.

Christopher Wild, director of the IARC, said: "These findings further support current public health recommendations to limit the intake of meat."

In the meantime, as red meat has nutritional value, the findings are important in helping national governments and international regulatory agencies conduct assessments to balance the risks and benefits of eating red and processed meat, and then provide the best possible dietary recommendations, he said.

A complex disease

Chen Wanqing, director of the Chinese National Central Cancer Registry at the National Health and Family Planning Commission, said cancer is an extremely complex disease and cannot be caused by a single food source.

However, he conceded that IARC is a world-renowned academic organization and the findings were evidence-based. "They are trustworthy," he said. "The exact causes of cancer remain unknown and a balanced diet coupled with a healthy lifestyle is the key to human health."

Fang Yu, chief nutritionist at the Beijing Cancer Hospital, said the IARC report should not be used to promote a complete ban on red meat.

"It's meaningless to talk about carcinogens without mentioning the amount consumed," she said, but recommended maximum monthly consumption of 500 grams of red meat per person and suggested that people should not eat any processed meats.

Dwight W. Clark, medical director of the US-Sino HeartCare Center in Beijing, said that consumption of red or processed meat is not only associated with cancer, but also with other illnesses, such as heart disease.

A study by the National Institutes of Health in the US involving more than 500,000 people in the US found that those who regularly ate large portions of red and processed meats over a 10-year-period were likely to die earlier than their peers who ate little of either.

People who ate about 113 grams of red meat every day were more likely to die from cancer or heart disease than those who ate small amounts, roughly 14 grams a day, according to the study, although the scientists involved classified the increased risk as "modest".

Unsurprisingly, the meat industry has rebuffed suggestions that red or processed meat can cause, or contribute, to cancer, adding that lean red meat fits the dietary requirements for healthy cardiac function.

Janet Riley, a senior vice-president at the American Meat Institute, an industry group, said the study, which asked participants to list all the foods they ate every day, were unable to demonstrate cause and effect.

"Many of these suggestions could be nothing more than statistical noise," she said.

Despite industry objections, other studies have discovered similar links to those outlined in the IARC report. One study in the US, which followed 72,000 women for 18 years found that people who regularly ate a Western diet high in red and processed meats, desserts, refined grains and French fries had a higher risk of heart disease and cancer than those who didn't.

"Changing Climate, Changing Diets: Pathways to Lower Meat Consumption", a report published by the Royal Institute of International Affairs, an independent policy institute in London, said that globally, meat consumption has reached an unhealthy level and is still rising. Excessive consumption of meat has contributed to rising levels of obesity and chronic illnesses, such as cancer and type-2 diabetes, it said.

Meanwhile, the consumption of meat also has an environmental impact, according to the report, which concluded that the growing appetite for meat has become one of the major drivers of climate change because the livestock sector accounts for about 15 percent of global emissions, equivalent to the exhaust emissions of all the vehicles in the world. Reducing meat consumption worldwide will be critical to keeping global warming below the "danger level" of 2C, the major goal of recent climate negotiations in Paris, it concluded.