Recently, the World Health Organization classified processed meat,

also known as cured meat, bacon, ham, hot dogs, lunch, meat, sausage,

as definitively cancer-causing in humans.

As if that's not enough, high processed meat consumption has also been associated with increased risk

of dying prematurely from all causes put together, and is a risk factor for several major

chronic diseases, such as

type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, and stroke.

What about lung issues like asthma?

Nitrites are added to processed meats as preservatives to preserve their pink, so they don't turn

gray, keeping them less rancid

tasting, and to present the growth of diseases like botulism.

But put that same sodium nitrite in a drinking water of lab animals, and they develop

emphysema.

They nearly all developed emphysema.

But that's all the scientific knowledge we had on the subject coming into 2007

until this study, which found that frequent cured meat consumption is associated with

increased risk for developing diseases like emphysema in people, too.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Eating it like every other day appeared to triple the odds of severe COPD.

But it was just a snapshot in time study, so we don't know which came first.

The sausage or the COPD for that.

We need prospective studies to follow people over time, and the big twin Harvard

...