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[–] 1 point 1 year ago

There is no safe amount? What? Not even zero?

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  • [–] 154 points 1 year ago (21 children)

    as little as one hot dog a day

    That still seems like a lot to me.

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  • [–] 53 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    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%.

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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 35 points 1 year ago (11 children)

    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?

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  • [–] 26 points 1 year ago (10 children)

    Think that’s about the average.

    Deli meats, pizza toppings, bacon, etc.

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    All bacon worldwide is processed meat because it’s treated to preserve shelf life.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (5 children)
  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago

    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.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    They use fewer chemicals but it’s still processed and still carcinogenic.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    The hot dog was supposed to be an example. A more common one is lunch meat, which some people do eat every day.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Fair point. My kid eats a lot of turkey sandwiches.

    Anyone know the conversion rate of turkey slices to hotdogs?

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    Well if you roll up a Turkey slice its about the same size? Hard to say though, it varies by brand and region. Most of this stuff doesnt apply outside the US as much either as food standards tend to be very low in the states.

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  • [–] 126 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    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

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  • [–] 39 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 54 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    "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.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 92 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    Everyone who has ever eaten a hot dog will die

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  • [–] 37 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    studies show that 100% of people who drink water will also die.

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  • [–] 23 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    I don't have a problem. I can stop drinking water whenever I want to.

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  • [–] 63 points 1 year ago (11 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Well, you're right and I'm surprised I've never thought of this before.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    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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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    We have collectively forgotten that correlation != causation

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    I actually don't think it's possible to forget. In the sense that pattern recognition and chain-of-event are thought structures baked into our very beings. We don't intuit that most things are random in a greater sense, and probabilistic on a finer resolution. We're always looking for self-satisfying, singular paths of causality and they don't exist.

    Touch red hot metal burn skin; Stab self in face make self not alive. A necessary abbreviated thought structure essential to human survival.

    Extend that perspective to eat ween get beetus. Wait.

    What is the field of nutritional epidemiology hoping to accomplish by obsessively searching for links (their magic word) between disease and dietary intake? It assumes, by the very nature of the question, that there is a direct causal relationship between diet & illness. There can't be. Any sufficiently complicated system of interrelationships is going to have massive amounts of turbulence and chaos!

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  • [+] -10 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    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

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    Sure there are exceptions. You haven't made any point about whether processed meats cause poor health outcomes though. They do, and its been shown over and over again, but people don't like someone telling them they have bad habits.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    that’s not the point i was addressing in my comment though, i agree processed foods a very bad. and poorer people are more likely to eat them. there’s no debate there from me.

    i was only addressing your broad generalization of looking at all food doctors recommend for pregnant people to avoid. while it does include lots of bad and unhealthy foods, these recommendations also include foods that are directly related to fetal development, hormone changes, etc

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Yeah I was being overly broad but its a good starting point still when looking to cut out unhealthy foods. People seem to understand why pregnant people shouldnt smoke or drink, I just think they should consider the foods they shouldnt eat either and why.

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  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    7% increase of an already small chance in exchange for 1 hotdog/day doesn't sound that bad to me.

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  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    It never seems that bad unless you're in that small percent. Cancer's a damned awful way to die.

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  • [–] 35 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    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.

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  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Let's begin by reading the article, and noting this key sentence: "“Habitual consumption of even small amounts of processed meat, sugary drinks, and trans fatty acids is linked to increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes, ischemic heart disease and colorectal cancer,” said lead author of the study, Dr. Demewoz Haile, a research scientist at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle. "

    Health effects associated with consumption of processed meat, sugar-sweetened beverages and trans fatty acids: a Burden of Proof study https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-025-03775-8#author-information

    Abstract

    Previous research suggests detrimental health effects associated with consuming processed foods, including processed meats, sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) and trans fatty acids (TFAs). However, systematic characterization of the dose–response relationships between these foods and health outcomes is limited. Here, using Burden of Proof meta-regression methods, we evaluated the associations between processed meat, SSBs and TFAs and three chronic diseases: type 2 diabetes, ischemic heart disease (IHD) and colorectal cancer. We conservatively estimated that—relative to zero consumption—consuming processed meat (at 0.6–57 g d−1) was associated with at least an 11% average increase in type 2 diabetes risk and a 7% (at 0.78–55 g d−1) increase in colorectal cancer risk. SSB intake (at 1.5–390 g d−1) was associated with at least an 8% average increase in type 2 diabetes risk and a 2% (at 0–365 g d−1) increase in IHD risk. TFA consumption (at 0.25–2.56% of daily energy intake) was associated with at least a 3% average increase in IHD risk. These associations each received two-star ratings reflecting weak relationships or inconsistent input evidence, highlighting both the need for further research and—given the high burden of these chronic diseases—the merit of continuing to recommend limiting consumption of these foods.

    Then I hit a paywall. Anyone got a ladder?

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 21 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    sorry but one hotdog a day is not a small nor moderate amount.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    publishing this article three days before independance day is terrorism

    edit: two days. Somehow I thought the fourth of july was on the fifth.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    i usually use a little mnemonic device to remember exact dates for holidays. for fourth of July i try to match the last word with the month of the year and the first word with the day of the month.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago

    Ya well in the 70s and 80s this was what we as kids were given to eat.

    I'm paying for that now

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    So I have to eat raw meat?

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)
  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I felt shitty, I made changes to my diet and exercise, I feel much better now.

    It doesn't take research to convince me that processed foods, especially industrial, large scale, profit-above-all-else, processed food is bad for me.

    These results shouldn't surprise anyone, and I don't think they do. But, people will find excuses to keep doing unhealthy things they enjoy, and that is their prerogative.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    There is no where safe from fascists and ICE right now so I'm gonna eat all the processed meat I want dammit. If it gets much worse I'm gonna take up smoking and drinking again too, since I'll definitely fuck up and get exiled or worse for opposing all of this shit. On a related note, are there any good sources for quality FUCK ICE magnets and bumper stickers?

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Don't make their job easier for them. Fuck them! Health is wealth.

    https://youtu.be/9DxMFYpZZEo

    The state need not kill those that killing themselves
    Don't make it an easy job for 'em

    The killing of kids with £2 chicken and chips
    Is a tactic of war, waged on the poor
    Can't save wages on slave wages
    And you don't think fresh fruit with your face on the floor
    Nah, you need money for the kids
    Rent and light plus food in the fridge
    But that last box can be the hardest tick
    'Cause scraps will suffice but they might make you sick
    As a child I used to chow take out
    Twenty-four hours later skin break out
    Felt so heavy with it sitting in my belly
    Dessert was a sugar coated candy jelly
    Fam that's pig meat. Mashing up the kidney
    Make sure no government has to kill me
    I was killing myself till I realised danger
    Brain, heart, liver and lungs can hit failure
    Now season daal and veg with fresh herbs
    Cut caffeine because it messed with nerves
    Plenty lentils and chickpea curry
    20 minute meal for a man in a hurry
    That's real fast food that won't break the bank
    With enough nutrients to fill the tank
    Drink water for the body's natural power
    But water from taps can taste sour
    Food deserts are designed to starve us
    No fresh produce but we've got Starbucks
    Calories packed in treats to enlarge us
    May not see the effects but the heart does
    Can't breathe, can't sleep, can't run
    Casomorphin wreaks havoc on the lungs
    Just like fizzy wreaks havoc on the gums
    And my old man said diabetes ain't fun
    Ginger root is good for the youts
    Blend it up and share a fresh juice
    Burn sage, cleanse the room
    Body is a temple, don't let it be a tomb
    The food you choose to consume can damage
    Processed meats intestines can't manage
    Cattle farming still killing off the planet
    And it tells us everyday that it can't stand it
    Earth getting hotter while the sea levels rise
    All because you want burger with those fries
    All because you want milkshake with the meal
    Then to combat diarrhoea you take pills
    What's the deal? Eat right, stay active
    Stay strong 'cause the revolution is real
    Never know when a man might have to dash
    And a pig can't kill what a pig can't catch
    It's more than just eating right, it's survival
    Rasta man tell the youts eat Ital
    Daily exercise, fresh air is vital
    Whether you short walk, run or take cycle
    Meditate to live life and love it
    Plus stress increases acid in stomachs
    Read and chill to keep the mental covered
    And when you find struggle, try rise above it
    I find peace in the books on the shelf
    Food on the stove while it cooks I can smell
    It's gonna be good by the looks I can tell
    And it won't put my body through hell, well
    Well, I want strength like Phelps
    Good practises and discipline helps
    Not for the six-pack, I do it for myself
    'Cause it's true what they say your health is wealth
    Be healthy, be strong, alright

    Oh by the way, remember you are a gift to yourself and a gift to your environment
    Continue to be that beautiful gift
    Share that gift in your food, and all your gastronomic mastery

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    [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    Can I have a little sausage, as a treat?

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  • [+] 14 points 1 year ago (5 children)
  • [–] 27 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Eh, "refuse" makes sausage sound worse than it is. In the modern world anyplace with a food inspection system will typically see sausage made from cuts of meat that are perfectly edible but don't meet the grading standards likely to sell on the shelf , or the excess pieces of muscle left over after breaking primal cuts down into smaller pieces. No one wants to buy USDA certified Meh grade steak, or a palm sized wedge of uneven thickness. So they get sent off to make hamburger, sausage, and various canned or commercial meat products that don't need to be pretty.

    Processed meat also includes much more benign seeming foods, like sandwich meat, ground meats, and bacon. We've known for a while that eating meat, and more so red meat, is a risk for colon problems. Red meats are more likely to be processed and therefore cheap and salty.

    The new thing the study adds is that there isn't a lower bound. For a lot of things there's a quantity that isn't associated with any issues, and it's only when you go above that limit that the risk goes up.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    Truth.

    Yesterday I opened a huge bung of ground beef that I got from Costco.

    Fried up 1/3 of it up and when I tasted it... Damn that's f'kking bottom round roast beef 😋

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    One of the other interesting things in the US is that different states can have different laws for meat standards, as long as they meet or exceed USDA minimums. They can't, however, advertising that fact because it's a violation of interstate trade.
    So in the US, a legal hotdog ranges from a blend of the trimmings above and what can be removed from the bone with a power washer, up to "hot dogs must be made only of the product of primal cuts with no trimmings or waste meat".

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