Bacon linked to pancreatic cancer

13 January 2012

Eating two rashers a day can increase the risk of pancreatic cancer by 19%, and the risk goes up if a person eats more, experts have said.

Eating 50g of processed meat every day - the equivalent to one sausage or two rashers of bacon - increases the risk by 19% compared to people who do not eat processed meat at all.

For people consuming double this amount of processed meat (100g), the increased risk jumps to 38%, and is 57% for those eating 150g a day.

But experts cautioned that the overall risk of pancreatic cancer was relatively low - in the UK, the lifetime risk of developing the disease is one in 77 for men and one in 79 for women.

Nevertheless, the disease is deadly - it is frequently diagnosed at an advanced stage and kills 80% of people in under a year.

Only 5% of patients are still alive five years after diagnosis.

The latest study, published in the British Journal of Cancer, is from researchers at the respected Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.