Television Ad Links Hot Dogs To Colon Cancer
A controversial new TV advertisement showing young children eating hot dogs suggests a link between processed meats and a higher chance of developing colon cancer.
The commercial shows kids eating hot dogs in a school cafeteria and one little boy’s ominous statement: "I was dumbfounded when the doctor told me I have late-stage colon cancer."
Some are saying the ad vilifies one of America’s most beloved, if maligned, foods, while stoking fears about a dreaded disease.
However, the three kids in the ad who claim to be afflicted do not have cancer in real life.
The commercial’s pro-vegetarian sponsors say it’s a dramatization that highlights research linking processed meats, including hot dogs, with higher odds of getting colon cancer.
But that connection is based on the inconclusive studies of adults, not children, and the increased risk is slight, even if you ate a hot dog a day.
The commercial launched last month in several U.S. cities provides the perfect opportunity to separate fact from fiction about this mysterious yet so familiar meat.
Most nutritionists agree, however: Hot dogs aren’t exactly a "health food," but eating one every now and then probably won’t hurt you.
Colleen Doyle, the American Cancer Society’s nutrition director, said her concern about this campaign is it’s giving the indication that the occasional hot dog in the school lunch is going to increase cancer risk. "An occasional hot dog isn’t going to increase that risk."
Research figures show that Americans consume hot dogs way more than just occasionally.
U.S. consumers spent more than $4 billion on hot dogs and sausages last year, according to the National Hot Dog & Sausage Council. That includes more than 1.5 billion pounds of hot dogs and sausages bought at retail stores alone.
A hot dog wiener’s high fat and salt content and sodium nitrate and nitrite, commonly added preservatives and color-enhancers are considered the main health concerns. Nitrate-related substances have been reported to cause cancer in animals, but there’s no proof they do that in people.
According to the Hot Dog Council’s Janet Riley, hot dogs typically contain muscle meat trimmings from pork or beef. Contrary to legend, they do not contain animal eyeballs, hooves or genitals.
A U.S. Department of Agriculture spokeswoman said, however, that the government does allow them to contain pig snouts and stomachs, cow lips and livers, goat gullets and lamb spleens. If they have these byproducts, the label should spell out which ones, she said.
Some hot dogs are made with leaner meats, including turkey, as well as tofu or soy protein.
For most name-brand hot dogs, fat provides around 80 percent of total calories, more than double what’s often advised. What’s more, saturated fat and trans fat – the fats most strongly linked with artery-clogging – are common ingredients, in some cases providing at least half the fat content.
The new ad is an alarmist scare tactic, according to the hot dog council. But the ad’s promoters, a group called The Cancer Project, defend their campaign.
“The ad is a way to raise appropriate concern about a deadly concern,” said Dr. Neal Barnard, president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. Barnard also heads The Cancer Project, an offshoot of his anti-meat advocacy group.
Barnard said hot dogs may be considered as American as apple pie, but it is time to change that tradition.
"Children are born with no traditions whatsoever," he said. "You or I might think a hot dog, that just goes with baseball … We can always change our traditions to be healthful."
Scientists working with cancer research groups not affiliated with Barnard’s base the new ad on an analysis of five studies in adults.
Eating 50 grams a day of processed meats for several years increases colorectal cancer risk by 21 percent, the report said. That equals about one hot dog a day or two deli slices of bologna or five slices of bacon.
Dietitian Karen Collins, nutrition adviser with the American Institute for Cancer Research, a group that analyzed the studies, said the duration of daily consumption linked with that higher risk is uncertain. Colorectal cancer was diagnosed between three and 19 years after the studies began, but participants could have been eating processed meats for years before that.
Collins said for a U.S. adult, eating one hot dog daily for several years would increase the average risk of getting colorectal cancer, which is 5.8 percent, to 7 percent. On a population level, it would increase the number of people nationwide who get colorectal cancer each year from 58 per 100,000 people to 70 per 100,000.
"It’s not the kind of impact on risk that, say, tobacco smoking has on lung cancer. But on the other hand, colon cancer is one of our most common cancers, so small changes still affect a lot of people," Collins said.
She said eating a hot dog once or twice a month would mean up to about a 1.4 percent increased risk. "The risk we get from things like lack of physical activity, excess body weight, lack of adequate vegetables and fruits, these are much more important to work on than to worry about" a 1.4 percent increased risk.
Lilian Cheung, of the nutrition department at Harvard’s School of Public Health Sciences who analyzed the studies recommends avoiding processed meat””advice that makes sense.
She is not connected to Barnard’s group, but called its campaign "a good spark plug" to improve school foods and raise awareness.
The ad is part of a campaign to improve foods in schools and get the government to stop providing processed meats.
According to the USDA, the government provides some, such as ham and processed turkey. However hot dogs, pepperoni pizza, bacon and other popular processed meats are bought from local vendors, not the federal government.
Promoters of the Cancer Project want all processed meats off school menus. They recently issued a report analyzing menus from one month last spring at 28 large school districts. Half got failing grades for serving too much processed meat.
Many school districts are working to improve their menus, including Chicago’s, which is among those the Cancer Project "failed."
However, spokesman Franklin Shuftan said Chicago schools’ hot dogs are zero-trans-fat turkey dogs.
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On The Net:
The National Hot Dog & Sausage Council
The American Institute for Cancer Research