Meat and cancer

Meat as a cause of cancer has been the news as of late. Aaron Carroll for the Upshot describes why we should make a note but not freak out about it.

This means that, if I buy what the W.H.O. is saying, if I decided today to start eating an extra three pieces of bacon every day for the next 30 years, my risk of getting colon cancer might go from 2.7 percent to 3.2 percent. In other words, if 200 people like me made that decision, one extra person might get cancer. The other 199 would be unaffected.

It’s about understanding risk.