Ban ham in kids' lunches, say cancer researchers

Sunday Aug 23, 2009 - By Anna Rushworth

Meadowbank School pupil Ben Manning is easily pleased when it comes to what's in his lunch.

First pig farming exposes put people off buying pork, now ham and bacon in school lunches is a no-no.

Cancer researchers have warned that parents should not give their children ham sandwiches as processed meat - including salami, ham, bacon and pastrami - can increase the risk of bowel cancer in later life.

The lunch that Meadowbank School pupil Ben Manning enjoyed this week - a peanut butter sandwich, an apple, rice crackers and a muesli bar - would keep most nutritionists happy but they acknowledge that some parents might have an uphill battle to encourage their children to eat healthy lunches.

By comparison, Ben, aged 8, is easily pleased. His favourite fruits are "apples, oranges, kiwifruit, basically everything" and his favourite vegetable is the carrot.

Keeping the contents of school lunch boxes interesting enough for kids to eat the food inside is hard enough for parents, but bad press on one of the main ingredients could make things worse.

<SNIP>http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10592576

Get a grip.

Enjoy life.

Go have a nice ham sandwich or something.

Somehow New Zealanders are not allergic?

and has had bacon for breakfast just about every day of his life.

He is strong as an ox and never had any bowel problems ever.

It's a bit more expensive but very tasty. My tip is to cut strips in half so you feel like you're getting more in volume :)

And cancer rates keep plummeting.

Go figure?

I saw a study that looked at life expectancy by county, and many have not seen any increase at all.

And nobody really knows why - it could be smoking, but I haven't seen a study that demonstrates this.

Spicy Capicola, w good swiss cheese, brown mustard, and good lettuce on onion bagel.


question BTW what do men in New Zealand call sheep?


answer dates

The sandwich, not the sheep.

then don't obsess.

I will not live forever, but for as long as I live, I hope it will be as a healthy, non diseased person.
That was the point.
No wasting of time and money on doctors, when there are trails to hike, and life to live.

i give up

i am tired

too much too much

Peanuts also have resveratrol and protein.
Good for energy.

Pork has the bad kind of fat.

oth, I didn't have much trouble making him lunches that he ate: Cut up veggies and pita bread with a ranch style yogurt dip, cheddar and apple sandwiches, chicken salad, cold homemade veggie pizza, etc..

everyday for YEARS when I went to school! You couldn't give me anything else. As an adult, I haven't eaten any meat in over 33 years. I guess I was born a natural vegetarian.

No more peanut products allowed in the home from the time I was six years old.

The very first things I bought when I moved out to college were a jar of PB and a loaf of white bread.

Meat fats in modest quantities are good for you. The bad fat is trans-fat, a processed vegetable fat.

Of course the best fat comes from certain unprocessed vegetable sources, like olive oil.

It's not like 'bad fat' is a rigorously defined technical term or anything.

Before trans-fat got the label, saturated fats were called 'bad fats'. Unsaturated fats were "good fats"; of course, all trans fats are at least partially unsaturated, so go figure.

the babies adn young kids need the fat for brain growth.

parents trying to make little ones health conscious to such extent was hurting kids

It is required to repair the body - but must be the right kind.

Send them to school with bread and water.

Nothing is completely safe.

Pigs are gross, but delicious.

and really really GOOD, too!

Now that's pure awesomeness! :thumbsup:

450 mg

410

470

570

450

509

Regular "ham"

720 mg

786

640

550

600

650

740

I say it's pure bunk. I want to see the study this was based on and see how they controlled for the processed meats and didn't deal with the higher fat content or whatever.

People have been eating smoked meats for millenia. I seriously doubt that they're such a huge cause of cancer instead of all the toxins in our food, clothes, air, and larger environment.

such as bologna and hot dogs.

Nitrates and nitrites are known carcinogens.

One can get bacon without nitrates.

Is that "recently"?

I don't believe my parents grew up with it.

water drinker.
;-)

Smoke isn't the healthiest thing in the world. That said, I'm not going to worry about it.

so readily available.

They don't have all that fancy chemical stuff. They just smoke it and salt it (but use less, as it tastes way less salty to me) the old-fashioned way. Their ham is good, too.

If one lives in a OCD-ish constant terror of getting sick and dying and so one doesn't do anything what's the point of living?

a peanut butter sandwich, an apple (orange, banana, etc), yogurt, granola bar and whatever snackfood I bought that week.

You can find processed meats that do not contain nitrites-still made the same way that meats were cured for thousands of years.

"Name me any form of human activity and I'll find you a group of doctors against it."

I've heard many stories of how my grandparents made ham down on the farm in the 1920s and 30s -- packed in salt for a month, packed in sugar for another month, smoked and hung.

As Quantess points out upthread, our processed hams and sausages now contain nitrates, primarily to make the color look artificially fresh. Take the carcinogens out of the ham, not the ham out of the diet.

If the end of the world happened (nuclear war, plague, zombies) I don't know how to cure meat.

Thankfully there is the internet:
http://www.ehow.com/how_4728870_salt-cure-ham.html

I seem to remember reading in an older novel that they hid their hams up in the chimney: dry much of the time, smokey, and out of the way. I wonder if that would work, too.

There's no reason processed meats need to contain nitrates. The older methods would still work today.

:thumbsup:

and no, I am not kidding. I put bacon on salads (instead of fake) in egg scrambles, as part of a low carb diet my elderly father is on. If I can get him to eat salad greens with a grilled chix breast on top instead of a double decker sammy, BACON IT IS!!!!

Using some of the last of the best of this year's homegrown tomatoes.

I ate that all the time as a kid. I also ate liverwurst. I have no idea why...

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