You may be feeling a bit whipsawed by the never-ending arguments about what you take into your body and how it affects you. We all know of course that cigarettes are terrible, even though doctors recommended smoking as a way to relax up until the 1960s.  Coffee was thought to be terrible, but is now good for you.  Fat was terrible, but it now turns out we need it.  Too much sun causes skin cancer, but it turns out that too little causes Vitamin D deficiency.  The debate about eating red meat has been going back and forth, with specific diets like the very popular Atkins and Paleo diets recommending high meat consumption.

Now the World Health Organization is classifying red meat and processed meat as severely carcinogenic, putting it in the same category as smoking cigarettes. But their findings are not supported by all the evidence, the vote was not unanimous, and even they can’t say why red meat or processed meat causes cancer. We would also note that the world’s oldest living person, Susannah Jones, of Brooklyn, NY, eats 4 strips of bacon every morning.