From Paul Duginski
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Red & processed meat & cancer
From the American Cancer Society
What are red and processed meats?
Red meat includes beef, pork, veal, lamb, mutton, and goat. These meats might be fresh, ground, or frozen. Red meat is a probable carcinogen.
Processed meat has been treated through smoking, curing, salting, or fermentation. This includes bacon, ham, deli meat, sausage, and hot dogs. Processed meat is a known carcinogen.
Carcinogens are things that can cause cancer.
Do red and processed meats cause cancer?
Eating red and processed meat is linked to a higher risk of colorectal cancer. These meats may also increase the risk of breast, pancreatic, prostate, and stomach cancer, but more research is needed.
Red meat has heme iron, which has been shown to increase the risk of DNA damage and cancer. The risk of cancer may increase further when red meat is cooked at a high temperature, like grilling, frying, or broiling. These cooking methods create compounds found to cause DNA changes in lab studies. Processed meat contains nitrates and nitrites which, can damage DNA in cells and lead to increased cancer risk
.Both red and processed meat are high in saturated fats. Eating a lot of saturated fat can cause chronic inflammation and increase your risk of cancer. It can also increase your risk of having excess body weight, which can heighten your risk of cancer and other chronic diseases.
How much red and processed meat can I safely eat?
It is not known if any amount of red or processed meat can be eaten without increasing your risk of cancer.
The American Cancer Society guideline recommends choosing proteins like poultry, fish, or plant-based proteins instead of red meat most of the time. It’s best to avoid processed meat. If you do choose to eat processed meat, you are encouraged to do so sparingly.
The American Institute for Cancer Research and the American Society of Clinical Oncology recommend avoiding all processed meat and eating no more than 18 ounces (3 – 4 servings) of red meat each week to reduce cancer risk.
What can I eat instead of red and processed meat?
There are many sources of protein that can be eaten instead of red and processed meat. Some good options are:
- Poultry, such as chicken and turkey
- Fish and other types of seafood
- Plant-based sources of protein like beans, peas, lentils, nuts, soy, and mushrooms.
- Low-fat dairy products like milk, yogurt, and kefir.
Interesting. I mean, this isn't Uncle Gazza down the pub, or an earnest leaflet distributor on the high street. It's the American Cancer Society. But, actually, the evidence has been around for 40 years or longer. I found this chart online after searching my personal hard copy of Why You Don't Need Meat, which I bought in 1986, and which is a splendid book detailing everything you needed to know about eating meat, and why you shouldn't.
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Incidentally, a similar correlation exists for consumption of meat and heart disease.
Reading boosts memory, empathy & mental health
From New Scientist
Whether it is a novel by Charles Dickens or Jackie Collins, reading for pleasure is good for brain health. Regularly enjoying a good book has been linked to improved memory, empathy and mental health, among other benefits. This may be through its effect on brain structure or by building cognitive reserve.
“Reading is like a cognitive workout,” says Falk Huettig at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands, who wasn’t involved in the research. But reading for pleasure has plummeted over the past 20 years, which may partly be due to us spending more time on social media.
In the latest research, Barbara Sahakian at the University of Cambridge and her colleagues pooled evidence on the effects of reading for pleasure from five surveys and eight long-term studies, with tens of thousands of participants among them.
Many of these linked reading to greater volume of grey matter – part of the brain that supports thinking and memory – and stronger communication between brain regions. This may be how reading builds cognitive reserve, says Sahakian. This is the brain’s ability to defend against ageing and adapt to damage, which is heavily shaped by our lifestyle.
Reading was also repeatedly linked to improved mental health. One study found that children who began reading for pleasure early in life had moderately larger brain surface areas and volumes in regions linked to emotional control. This feels particularly important amid evidence that youth mental health is worse today than it was decades ago, says Sahakian.
Overall, the team linked reading for pleasure to reduced stress, greater empathy, enhanced wellbeing and reduced loneliness. In childhood specifically, reading was associated with better attention, memory, executive function, academic achievement and fewer mental health problems. Among older adults, it was linked to a lower risk of cognitive decline.
Reading fiction may be particularly important by exposing us to narratives that allow our brain to practice how we might respond to life events, improving its predication abilities. It may also make us feel connected to the characters, reducing feelings of loneliness.
Non-fiction may stimulate different parts of the brain, says Sahakian. But what is important is that you “read for enjoyment, as you will read more often and longer”, she says.
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| The book I'm reading at the moment. A clever and witty and poignant urban fantasy. Highly recommended. |
EVs now 9 times cheaper than petrol cars
From Carbon Brief
The latest surge in fossil-fuel prices means it is now up to nine times cheaper in the UK to drive an electric vehicle (EV) than a petrol or diesel car, shows Carbon Brief analysis.
Since February, when the US first attacked Iran, the average price of diesel has increased by 38% to £1.96 a litre, according to Carbon Brief analysis of government figures.
Following the attack on the Kapotnya oil refinery in Russia on 20 September and with tensions in the Middle East growing, this is expected to pass a record £2 a litre.
(Russia was the second-largest exporter of diesel in the world, but its refineries have been hit every three days on average in the first six months of 2026.)
Similarly, petrol prices have surged by 31% since February to £1.72, based on government figures, with some locations reaching nearly £2 per litre, according to BBC News.
These increases have been driven by oil prices jumping to more than $100 per barrel as the conflict between Yemen’s Houthis and Saudi Arabia escalates – a roughly 50% increase from June.
As such, it now costs an estimated 21p per mile to drive a diesel car and 20.1p per mile for petrol, according to Carbon Brief analysis of the latest figures from the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ).
In contrast, it is currently nine times cheaper to drive an EV charged using an off-peak tariff, at 2.3p per mile, as shown in the chart below.
Even if charging with electricity bought at the domestic price cap – the maximum amount a supplier can charge for a unit of energy and standing charge, set by the regulator Ofgem every three months – it still only costs around 7p per mile to drive an EV, three times cheaper than the price for petrol or diesel cars.
The price cap is set to increase in October, but almost all of the increase is for gas, with the unit rate of electricity only expected to rise by less than 1% from 26.1p per unit to 26.3p.
A larger 20% increase in electricity unit rates under the price cap is expected in January 2027, as higher gas costs filter through to an increase in wholesale electricity prices. Nevertheless, EVs would still remain far cheaper to drive than petrol or diesel cars.
UK drivers could save around £80 by charging an EV at home, in comparison with filling up a petrol car at the pump, as shown in the figure below. This is based on comparing the cost of an average full tank of petrol with the cost of enough electricity to drive the same distance.
Livestock industry biggest source of methane
From Annie Leymarie
Methane is 80 times as potent a greenhouse gas as CO2 over 20 years. The good news is that it decays to CO2 over 12 years. And so, if we cut our emissions, this would have a rapid effect on temperatures, as the increase in atmospheric methane is responsible for 1/3 of the rise in temperatures since 1850-1900.
Hottest June-July-August ever
From Zack Labe
The last three months are the warmest on record globally, relative to every other June-July-August period since 1850. Data from NOAA/NCEI's NOAAGlobalTempv6.1.0.
And El Niño is just beginning! 2027 could reach 1.8 degrees C above pre-industrial levels. (Note chart is relative to 1901-2000 baseline, not pre-industrial.)
The biggest step you can take to cut emissions (methane is responsible for 1/3rd of the rise in temperatures since pre-industrial times) is to stop eating beef and mutton, and replace cow's milk with a plant-based milk. You can do that. It's something you can do, in a world run by Trumpist billionaires and oil companies. You. Of course, we could also vote these drongos out. But while we wait for that to happen, we can still act. We are not helpless.
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