i can’t argue with toddlers
Jokes on them. I do tons of unsafe shit, and probably only one of those things is going to kill me. There will be no accountability for 99.9% of the bad behavior, including unregulated hotdog intake. Suckers.
I’m not a nutritional epidemiologist.
But I’ve started to get into learning about it in the last few months.
It’s really starting to feel like this is a giant bullshit field, and as much as they are trying to find useful results, there’s something severely wrong with how they seem to arbitrarily assign causality and correlation.
In a contrived example: “People who live near power lines have more cancer” - “No, poor people live near power lines because they’re poor, and poor people have more cancer”
What are the kind of people that eat processed hot dogs? I can promise you they are not millionaires. I can promise you it’s not people who can afford filet mignon but decide to have a steamed hot dog. It’s not people who work out and take care of their bodies. It’s not people who cook.
So when a study is done like this, what answer are you actually getting? probably finding out that the type of people who eat processed meat are more prone to these conditions for a variety of considerations that are just totally left out of the analysis.
Basically: wanna live healthy and forever? Just become a billionaire! If you don’t want to live healthy then I guess that’s your choice to make.
Well, you’re right and I’m surprised I’ve never thought of this before.
The EMF from power lines was a real mind virus that went around when I was a teenager!
I’ve been alive too long and have seen this pattern play out again, and again, and again. Feeling a little sad right now, actually.
For another example: all my life the common sense accepted wisdom, supported by real dermatologists was that to keep the likelihood of skin cancer to a minimum there is zero known healthy level of sun exposure. Well that’s all out the f’king window in 2025 because we now know the deleterious effects of insufficient sun exposure are vastly more severe compared to an increased morbidity for types of skin cancer.
I don’t want to be mr critical, but… there’s something wrong in our whole approach to these “studies” and I don’t know what fixes it. Any experts wanna help describe what I’m getting at with the right technical language?
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Yes, poor people eat poor quality food more often but the food is bad either way.
Here’s a good tip, look at allllll of the specific foods that a doctor would tell a pregnant person to avoid. Non-pregnant people should also avoid them, and processed meats have been on that list for a long time.
that’s not true. pregnant people are told to stay away from sushi because of immunity with raw fish. you should also not eat papaya while pregnant because it can cause premature contractions. you’re making a very broad generalization that the recommendation to pregnant people is completely nutrition based, but there’s many factors when growing a life inside you.
like in early pregnancy, you eat foods high in choline. that’s not because foods low in choline are bad for you, but because during early fetal development, choline builds neural tubes
Try to follow the thrust of the conversation.
Ya well in the 70s and 80s this was what we as kids were given to eat.
I’m paying for that now
sorry but one hotdog a day is not a small nor moderate amount.
There are plenty of toddlers who’d disagree with you
Right lol that’s an insane amount of hot dogs
Every few trips to Costco already seems too often, but it is delicious.
Are the Germans dying in droves due to this?
Im so screwed.
Be like a Harley rider - embrace your dangerous lifestyle.
There is no safe amount? What? Not even zero?
So I have to eat raw meat?
Mett gang assemble!
as little as one hot dog a day
That still seems like a lot to me.
The hot dog was supposed to be an example. A more common one is lunch meat, which some people do eat every day.
Fair point. My kid eats a lot of turkey sandwiches.
Anyone know the conversion rate of turkey slices to hotdogs?
hello my name is Guy Who Eats 365 Hot Dogs Per Year, I’m here for chest pain
A hot dog a day keeps the doctors employed.
I suggest you don’t visit West Virginia…
Each year, West Virginians consume 481 hot dogs per capita, according to 24/7 Wall St. That means the average West Virginian eats more than one hot dog a day. Illinois locals love their Chicago dog, and they didn’t even come close to West Virginia’s annual hot dog consumption, hitting 317 per capita.
https://www.tastingtable.com/1887834/west-virginia-most-hot-dogs/
Coincidentally West Virginia has an obesity rate of 41%.
I feel like the west virginia statistic may be heavily biased by what a poor family might feed a child. I remember my parents using hot dogs for ‘cheap’ meat that could be doctored into meals that my picky toddler ass would eat.
West Virginia is what,the third poorest state in GDP per capita? The average there is poor, so yeah.
While I’m sure they meant a hotdog sized amount per day… yeah, thats terrible wording. When I eat hot dogs I might eat 2 or 3 at a cook out or something… then not eat hotdogs for like 3 months. They could have evoked the “amount” better. And even then… who eats that much ultra processed meat?
Think that’s about the average.
Deli meats, pizza toppings, bacon, etc.
how is bacon ultra processed meat? bacon is just part of a pig in the same way that loin or rump are. Unless US bacon is just reconstituted corn syrup like most of their stuff seems to be.
the curing process introduces carcinogenic nitrates, which is a similar risk factor, if I understand correctly
All bacon worldwide is processed meat because it’s treated to preserve shelf life.
Butcher bacon is different
The real difference in butcher bacon is that they get the better cut of meat. The cheaper cut goes into the sliced packages for grocery stores.
I sure hope not. Sodium nitrite is one of the ‘problematic’ compounds and is used when curing meat, especially to prevent the bacteria that produces botulinum toxin from growing. While nitrites may kill you slowly, botulism can kill you much faster.
The problem with food that contains the botulism bacteria is that you don’t notice it. It doesn’t look or smell any different. Any meat that wasn’t cured using a specific minimum percentage of sodium nitrite is not to be trusted.
They use fewer chemicals but it’s still processed and still carcinogenic.
Tell us how it’s processed. You seem to know a lot about it.
It’s cured and smoked.
For as little as one hot dog a day, you could save this person from diabetes
It’s also important to note that the studies included in the analysis were observational, meaning that the data can only show an association between eating habits and disease –– not prove that what people ate caused the disease
right. that’s just about any food study! it’s the trouble with the nutrition field in general
I think that if you know a person who eats a hot dog every day, you will have many other reasons to suspect that they’re unhealthy.
The hot dog was an example, lunch meat is also processed and plenty of people eat a sandwich every day.
Isn’t pasta also ultra processed? Bread?.. Butter? CHEESE? Isn’t everything ultra processed? Even beans if they have been dried and canned?
Eh they’re mostly water and sawdust.
Doing the Lord’s work here. Thank you.
Everyone who has ever eaten a hot dog will die
studies show that 100% of people who drink water will also die.
I don’t have a problem. I can stop drinking water whenever I want to.
I need to stop oxygen…everyone who has it dies.
See, that’s the addiction talking. Seek help.
It’s easy to quit drinking water. I do it several times a day.
That’s why I only drink Mtn Dew
When?
Yup
7% increase of an already small chance in exchange for 1 hotdog/day doesn’t sound that bad to me.
It never seems that bad unless you’re in that small percent. Cancer’s a damned awful way to die.
Sure but there are a ton of things, genetic, environmental, dietary, neurochemical, etc. that can contribute to the development of cancer. You can do literally everything right and end up in the exact same place as someone who did all the wrong things because the causes are innumerable and many are literally unavoidable.
Would I regret my choices if I got cancer after I did all the things the studies say would increase my odds? Of course I would. Would I regret my choices if did everything “right” and still got cancer? Of course I would. But that’s because being in that position inherently biased you against your past. If I did all the wrong things I would regret that I indulged too much, and if I did all the right things I would regret that I never really indulged at all and enjoyed life fully. Either way you got shafted. You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
But to me it’s better to just live intentionally but without having this constant concern about every single thing I eat, drink, or breath maybe, possibly, eventually contributing to developing cancer. Like I’m not about to start smoking, I rarely drink, I try to eat enough veggies, etc. because those things have much more tangible direct consequences that I’m mindful of, and I’m not about to eat a hotdog every day mostly because I’m a really good cook and that sounds sad as fuck. But the next time I do eat a hotdog, a salami, or a Reuben sandwich, I promise you that no part of my mind is going to be worrying that it will give me cancer. Constant dread is its own form of cancer and life’s too short and uncertain to live with that shit 24/7.
I know these things logically. I wish I could embed them more emphatically so that articles like this don’t kick up my anxiety the way they do. Thanks for putting this comment to remind me to come down from the ledge of needless dread and worry.
Worrying too much causes cancer
Well said.
Words to live by. Well put.
“As little as one hot dog a day”, doesn’t really strike me as a great example of a “small” amount of processed meat. I’d generally say I ate a lot of something if I had it literally on a daily basis.
Totally agree on hotdogs, but if someone ate a slice of standard toast for breakfast every day I wouldn’t say they ate a lot of toast.
Point being, I don’t think the frequency can be considered independent of the thing.They maybe could have phrased it better as “consumption of as little as 2 ounces of processed meat, about one hotdog, a day…”.
A hotdog is a relatable unit of measure for an amount of food, but a hotdog a day isn’t normal. A hotdog one day, a deli sandwich the next, and so one though isn’t preposterous.…constantly fails the engineering exam… …constantly eats roast beef…
I love Red Dwarf so much.
Smoke me a (non-processed) kipper, I’ll be back for
cancerbreakfast!
Considering humans have been eating processed meats like these for centuries, I think I’ll take my chances.
And our rates of intestinal cancer have been rising steadily to the point where now it’s a common killer, so we’ve become afraid of it in our quest to live long, pain-free lives.
Things change as we learn. Why we don’t use lead in our pipes anymore. Safe, biocompatible plastic only.
If the rates have been rising, wouldn’t that prove it’s not processed meats like these? It would be something that’s being introduced at a steady rate lately, not something that’s been around for centuries.
Nitrites have being slowly “introduced” at a steady rate lately
If the problem is nitrites, then the problem is not processed meats, it’s nitrites. Therefore, the headline is wrong. Kinda like the problem with making hats was not making hats, but mercury exposure.
It is likely many factors at once but it’s also important not to assume causation where there is a correlation. Keep in mind also our mechanism of detection is better now than it’s ever been.
Yeah, but I think I’ll take 60 years of eating really tasty meats and foods at the risk of slightly increasing my chance of getting cancer and dying at like 65 instead of 85.
But it’s also about quality of life; do you want the last decade to be in increasing pain with challenged mobility or not as bad?
Nitrites only date back to the middle of the 19th century.
Isolated as a pure salt, maybe. All those “uncured” varieties listing celery as an ingredient are making use of the same compound though.
We’ve been smoking, salting, and otherwise preserving meat for way longer than that, though. People usually died off from other things before cancer got them, that’s all. The relatively high number of cancer deaths is a product of medical intervention getting so good and so widespread that we don’t regularly die of sepsis from stepping on a splinter or catching communicable disease anymore.
Absolutely, fuck cancer. But cancer went from being a minor concern to a relatively common one because we conquered so many other avenues of death, systematically and carefully, until we’re down to time, neglect and negligence as the three main ways humanity gets itself to the Reaper.
Yeah, I try not to make it my entire diet, but… no pepperoni? Why live?
