Evaluating your likely current (and near future) state of health means taking into account the risk factors — such as grilled meat consumption — that affect you. Our medical diagnosis tool, The Analyst™, identifies major risk factors by asking the right questions.
Aside from fast food, roughly how often do you eat grilled or barbecued red meat or chicken?
Possible responses:
→ Don't know→ Never / no more than once per year → Once per month or less → 2-4 times per month → More than 4 times per month |
You can increase your cancer risk by eating too much grilled red meat or chicken or even meat pan-fried at a very high temperature. Meat or chicken that is well-done or burnt appears to be the most problematic. The worrisome chemicals created by grilling meats are called heterocyclic amines (HAs). They form during grilling, broiling, or even searing meat in a very hot frying pan – when the very high temperatures break down the amino acid creatinine. There is also some concern that fats from the meat dripping onto coals create additional chemicals in smoke that may land back on the meat.
It is tragically ironic that after McDonald's CEO apparently dropped dead of a heart attack in 2004, their new CEO was in the operating room with colorectal cancer only 16 days later, and died in January of 2005.
A study of 276 patients with colon cancer links well-done red meat colon cancer. [Carcinogenesis (Vol. 22, No. 10: pp.1681-4)]