KEY POINTS:
Too much bacon is bad for you, and taking the skin off your chicken may not be so good either.
These warnings are the latest entries in the extensive catalogue of dietary dangers being thrown up by medical researchers
A research team headed Dr Dominique Michaud of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston found that people who ate bacon five times a week or more were more than 60 per cent more likely than non-bacon eaters to develop bladder cancer.
Those who ate skinless chicken five times a week lifted their bladder cancer chances by 52 per cent.
Some meat products contain nitrosamines, which cause bladder cancer, Dr Michaud and her team say in their report, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
But studies trying to investigate the meat-bladder cancer link have been small and most have not separated out the effects of different types of meat.
To better understand the relationship, Dr Michaud's team looked at data for 47,422 American men and 88,471 women whose health had been tracked in two larger studies for up to 22 years. During the time of the studies, 808 subjects developed bladder cancer.
People who ate bacon and other processed meats often were also more likely to smoke and to have diets heavy in fat and light in vitamins, the researchers found.
The association between the total meat consumption and bladder cancer was not statistically significant.
But those who ate bacon five or more times a week were 59 per cent more likely to develop bladder cancer than those who never did.
And those who ate skinless chicken this often were 52 per cent more likely to develop bladder cancer than those who always left the skin on.
Chicken cooked with the skin on contains a smaller amount of heterocyclic amines - carcinogenic compounds formed when meat is cooked at high temperatures - than skinless chicken.
The researchers have only one small word of cheer for those partial to a feed of bacon and skinless chicken - they note that their findings must be confirmed by more research before any conclusions can be made.
- REUTERS
