World Health Organization announces processed meat as carcinogenic.

The WHO IARC, or World Health Organization International Agency of Research and Cancer, announced that processed meat was classified as a Group 1 category, or carcinogenic to humans, based on sufficient evidence. Expounding on meat consumption and its effects, they concluded that eating red meat increases your risk of colorectal cancer by 18%. One must note that this is not an 18% increase from an out of 100% chance of getting cancer. This is an 18% increase from the already 4.5% chance of getting cancer. In other words, this is a relative increase. This gives a completely different scope to what 18% really means, and what it really means is an 18% increase of 4.5% which is 5.31% from a daily intake of 50g portions of processed meat.

David Phillips, a cancer researcher from the UK, made this analogy: "To make an analogy, think of banana skins. They definitely can cause accidents - but in practice this doesn't happen very often (unless you work in a banana factory). And the sort of harm you can come to from slipping on a banana skin isn't generally as severe as, say, being in a car accident, but under a hazard identification system like the IARC's, 'banana skins' and 'cars' would come under the same category - they both definitely do cause accident." - David Phillips

In other words, the IARC cares only about the hazards, and not about the magnitude, and that's an important distinction to make.

In other news, it has also classified red meat as a Group 2A category, which is probably carcinogenic to humans based on limited evidence. 

Original IARC press release document here.