Halloween Trick or Treaters Beware: Chocolate Linked to Higher Bowel Cancer Risk

It is common knowledge that eating excessive red meat can lead to bowel cancer. Even the department of health warns non-vegetarians to limit their intake of meat to 70g a day. However, according to Roger Leicester, Director of Endoscopy at St George's Hospital and Director of SW London Bowel Screening Program, meat has been treated unfairly over all these years. Mr. Leicester who was also a secretary of the British Society of Gastroenterology, also said that eliminating red meat from your diet can cause deficiency of iron in our bodies. In fact, chocolate that is laced with fat and sugar causes much more harm probability of cancer, reported Daily Mail.

He explains that man by nature is an omnivore. He further adds that all this hype about red meat being a health hazard is based on wildly inaccurate studies that were conducted far back in the seventies, revealing that the vegetarians had a slightly lower risk of bowel cancer than the red meat eating non-vegetarians, as per Daily Mail. Based on this revelation, it is inaccurate to blame red meat for cancer because the test subjects, Seventh Day Adventists, also didn't smoke or drink, while most of them even avoided coffee or spices that can attribute to cancer. It is bad science to use just one aspect of a restrictive diet and make claims about the risk of cancer.

Leicester further adds that to say that red meat alone is responsible for bowel cancer is a far fetched claim. He says that is ok to stick with the government recommended intake of 500g of red meat that includes the processed meat in a week, that is 70g in a day. The trick is to cook food in moderation and avoid foods with high salt and sugar intake that are the real cause of cancer.