Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s suggestion of a Marmite sandwich and an apple for lunch wouldn’t keep a child full or feed their brain sufficiently, according to local health and education experts.
“If you’re just doing a Marmite sandwich and an apple, you’re probably not meeting the protein requirements [which depend on age and gender],” paediatric dietician Jenny Douglas explained to RNZ.
“Ideally it would be a Marmite and cheese sandwich at least,” she said, noting that the high salt content of Marmite, which could shape one’s palate, giving a child a taste for salty snacks like pies and chips early on.
Well this is going to turn a bit dark but processed meats are loaded with nitrates (normally sodium nitrate, listed as “Preservative (250)”), which is one of very few things on the WHOs “definitely causes cancer” list. So I try to avoid it if possible.
Outside of occupational risks (and biological ones, like HPV), the “definitely causes cancer” list is very short. The main ones are basically smoking, alcohol, and processed meat.
So it’s not a case of “everything causes cancer” and more a case of specifically avoiding processed meat in lunch boxes/in general.
The list is here: https://monographs.iarc.who.int/list-of-classifications
Group 1 is the definitely causes cancer group. I find it easiest to download and filter in Excel.
The list of groups is here: https://monographs.iarc.who.int/agents-classified-by-the-iarc/
Yeah, IIRC the science on that & the dosage required isn’t quite as settled as the WHO warning suggests. But in any case, you can always cure your own using just salt! I think mostly the nitrate is there to keep it pink.
You can buy bacon without nitrates, but the nitrates are the yummy bit… it does make it pink but if you taste bacon with no added nitrates it’s not the same.
In terms of dosage… this isn’t really a case of benefits outweighing risks. I’m not aware of any health benefits of eating highly processed meat (that you couldn’t get from the unprocessed equivalent). Easiest to minimise consumption to reduce the risk. I’ll still eat it on a burger in the same way I’ll still have the occasional beer even though alcohol is a known carcinogen, but I don’t want processed meat to be an everyday food.