Processed Meat is Coming to Get You

The story about the dangers of processed meat is leading on the radio, TV and though I don't buy a daily paper so can't be sure, doubtless in the press too. Sadly from the interview with one of the researchers on whose report the story is based quality is not the issue, but the presence in all such meats of preservative chemicals.

Apparently the safe level of consumption is deemed to be one rasher of bacon, or one sausage, per day. That is each rather than for the entire country, but it is only a matter of time.

I don't doubt the science, and will take it into account in my cooking, but am saddened that yet another of life's pleasures now has a safe daily limit. We have limited our alcohol consumption to Fridays, Saturdays and some Sundays, though not without the occasional sip midweek when circumstances dictate. I now await with dread the announcement on Today that reading more than two pages of PG Wodehouse a day is thought to be carcinogenic.

On reflection, however, I am pretty sure that we don't exceed that limit of one rasher/link a day, even taking into account occasional enjoyment of Mortadella, Parma Ham, and salamis various. That researcher said it wasn't a matter of quality, but if we are to limit our consumption of such things, surely we (if we have the means) should seek out the very best, so that this now slightly guilty pleasure should maximize said pleasure? As ever a bad meal is a wasted opportunity, and within that meal wet and tasteless bacon, or foully bready sausages, wastes our ration of preserved pork.

Yet again, btw, nobody on Today mentioned enjoyment as part of our dietary benefits. I recall (as I may have done previously here, but never mind) the thriller writer whose name escapes me who retired to Jersey and every day there ate the same lunch at the same table in the same restaurant: eggs and bacon and champagne. Setting aside the monotony that doesn't appeal, the decision to enjoy to the utmost a glorious obsession is clear and for me laudable. That writer may have died of cancer eventually, (then again he may not) but for the years in which he tucked into his favourite meal he packed a vast amount of pleasure. Which would you judge preferable - his perhaps somewhat shortened but pleasing existence, or someone who lived five years more lunching on brown rice and cabbage water?