The War on Delicious

A new report linking meat with cancer raises questions about America’s–and the world’s–eating habits

Americans love to talk about their freedoms. Most of the time they mean the familiar ones–speech and press and assembly, as well as the other high-minded things our forefathers made sure to include in the national contract. But there are other freedoms too–the freedom to be loud, the freedom to be large, the freedom to have an appetite for anything at all and then set out to satisfy it.

Now this is being called into question by doctors, by public heath advocates and by the World Health Organization (WHO), which has not just Americans’ well-being in mind but also that of the entire globe–including country after country to which America has eagerly exported its diet. In a sweeping review released on Oct. 26, the WHO officially identified processed meat as a Group 1 carcinogen, meaning the quality of the evidence firmly links it to cancer. Red meats fare little better, falling into Group 2A–foods or substances that probably cause cancer–a category that includes the toxic pesticide DDT, the chemical weapon mustard gas and the insecticide malathion. (Groups 2B, 3 and 4 are foods or substances that are possibly carcinogenic, not yet classifiable as carcinogenic or probably not carcinogenic, respectively.)

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