Hamburgers and cancer

Iron and toxins formed during cooking red meat could be the culprit which can cause cancer.

A team of researchers are advising people to replace foods like burgers, sausage and steak with foods like poultry, fish and beans after the results of long-term study have proved that red meat increases the risk of colorectal cancer.

The study named iron and the toxins formed during cooking and preserving red meat as some of culprits which can cause cancer.

Conducted by researchers at the American Cancer Society (ACS) in Atlanta, Georgia, the study found that the group that ate the most processed meat had twice the risk of developing colon cancer compared with those who ate the least, the team found; and those who ate most red meat had a 40 percent higher risk of getting rectal cancer, reports Nature.

By contrast, those who ate the highest quantity of poultry or fish had a 20-30 percent lower risk of developing the diseases, the team reports in the Journal of the American Medical Association1.

This applied even when the researchers took into account other risk factors, such as being overweight, not taking exercise and not eating fruit and vegetables.

Members of the high risk group ate around 55-85 grams of red or processed meat each day, roughly equivalent to a medium sized burger. Red meat includes burgers, meatloaf, beef, liver and pork. Processed meat includes bacon, sausage, hot dogs, ham, salami and lunch meat.