Its report said 50g of processed
meat a day - less than two slices of bacon - increased the chance of developing
colorectal cancer by 18%.
Meanwhile, it said red meats were
"probably carcinogenic" but there was limited evidence.
The WHO did stress that meat also
had health benefits.
Cancer Research UK said this was a
reason to cut down rather than give up red and processed meats.
And added that an occasional bacon
sandwich would do little harm.
What is processed meat?
Processed meat has been modified to either extend its shelf life or change the taste and the main methods are smoking, curing, or adding salt or preservatives.
Simply putting beef through a
mincer does not mean the resulting mince is "processed" unless it is
modified further.
Processed meat includes bacon,
sausages, hot dogs, salami, corned beef, beef jerky and ham as well as canned
meat and meat-based sauces.
It
is the chemicals involved in the processing which could be increasing the risk
of cancer. High temperature cooking, such as on a barbeque, can also create
carcinogenic chemicals.
In the UK, around six out of every
100 people get bowel cancer at some point in their lives.
If they were all had an extra 50g
of bacon a day for the rest of their lives then the risk would increase by 18%
to around seven in 100 people getting bowel cancer.
"So that's one extra case of
bowel cancer in all those 100 lifetime bacon-eaters," argued Sir David
Spiegelhalter, a risk professor from the University of Cambridge.
How
bad?
The WHO has come to the conclusion
on the advice of its International Agency for Research on Cancer, which
assesses the best available scientific evidence.
It has now placed processed meat in
the same category as plutonium, but also alcohol as they definitely do cause
cancer.
However, this does not mean they
are equally dangerous. A bacon sandwich is not as bad as smoking.
"For an individual, the risk
of developing colorectal (bowel) cancer because of their consumption of
processed meat remains small, but this risk increases with the amount of meat
consumed," Dr Kurt Straif from the WHO said.
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