Many threats are real. Bacon is not one of them

Three iron laws remain intact: Bacon is awesome; Meddling public health types really ought to stick to their knitting and find real problems to solve; And did I mention that bacon is really awesome?

Food and Drink - The Lion and Buffalo

As the barbecue smoke clears from this week’s pronouncement by the UN’s World Health Organisation that steaks, sausages, cured meats and bacon might just be the biggest (if somewhat tastier) killer since Genghis Khan, three iron laws of life remain firmly intact:

Bacon is awesome;

Meddling public health types really ought to stick to their knitting and find real problems to solve; and,

Did I mention that bacon is really, really awesome?

In fact not only does bacon (and prosciutto, and steak, and … well, you get the idea) remain great, but as it turns out the health risk touted by the UN turns out to be something of a fizzer. To put it in perspective, a bacon-eating man over 50 increases his risk of contracting bowel cancer from 0.68% to 0.8% — barely a blip on the statistical radar.

A smoker, on the other hand, ups his risk of lung cancer by something like 2000%.

Not that any of these facts has held back the tsunami of scare stories that are still coming. Particularly amusing on the day the report was released was those news outlets whose journalists never seem to be able to join the dots between a gunman yelling “religious slogans” and jihad suddenly declaring that Australia’s traditional meat-loving ways will send us all to an early grave.

Never mind that our current life expectancy recently nudged up over 82.

But who knows what lunacy we might see now that the UN has put smoked meats in the same category of carcinogen as asbestos, arsenic and Winnie Blues.

In line with recently imposed anti-tobacco regulations, it is surely only a matter of time before the state government imposes a three metre exclusion zone for bacon eaters at cafes (with a carve-out, naturally, for the casino).

And as someone who regularly sends his children to school with fat mortadella sandwiches slathered in mayonnaise — extra yummy if you add some bread-and-butter pickles by the way — it is probably only a matter of time before I get reported to Community Services.

Such headline-grabbing also comes at a real human cost, and not just in the happiness of all those people who thought twice about that bacon sandwich and forced themselves to eat a hunk of tofu instead.

Every time the for-your-own-good crowd runs a campaign that is both illiberal (actually, no, the provision of a public health system is not a license for the government to tell me what I can eat and drink) and inaccurate it makes it that much harder to educate people about real threats to the common good.

Need proof? Look no further than the dopey yet ironically often highly educated rump of parents who refuse to vaccinate their children, or the ongoing debate over water fluoridation in Queensland, where some still view a simple measure to prevent tooth decay as a sinister assault on our precious bodily fluids.

If there is one upside to the UN’s report, it is this: The only sort of meat that was truly, statistically found to be really really bad for you is the overcooked sort. Which is final proof of what every true steak-lover knows, namely, that an overdone filet is not just a crime against meat, it’s a crime against humanity.