So...that's clearly not true. The words on this page will not give you cancer, of that I can pretty much assure you. Let me also clarify that I am in no way trivialising the seriousness of cancer - it's a terrifying and horrendous disease and, like everyone else, I have lost loved ones to it. What I am writing is a reaction to a story I saw on the BBC website today, which you can read here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17345967
In a nutshell, and missing out all the boring medical stuff, it is basically telling us that scientists have now discovered that eating too much read meat (aka the good stuff) can significantly increase your chances of getting cancer. This can now be added to the list of 'things that give you cancer' along with Diet Coke, mobile phones, burnt toast, chewing plastic (straws, pens, etc), mouthwash and literally countless other things. Seriously, just Google it or go on the Daily Mail website for five minutes and you'll see what I'm talking about.
Obviously there are some things that genuinely do increase your risk of cancer quite drastically, such as smoking 100 a day or hitting the sunbeds for an hour a week without wearing sunblock. I'm also not suggesting that you start exclusively eating steak for every meal, washed down by ten litres of Diet Coke. All I'm saying is, I'm kind of sick of being told things that are not going to improve the quality of my life in any way, and in fact just make me afraid of leaving my bread in the toaster for too long. How many times have you heard the phrase 'everything in moderation'? There's a reason people say it all the time - because it's true.
If I only eat red meat, I know that's not going to be good for me. It will give me halitosis, make going to the toilet pretty weird and apparently also give me cancer. So maybe we didn't know the cancer thing before, but we did know that we're not supposed to gorge ourselves on too much of one thing. If I only ate apples for the rest of my life I'm pretty sure there would be some serious health implications attached to that too. In today's society more than ever, a BALANCED lifestyle and diet is what is being promoted to us. And rightly so.
I'm absolutely fed up of people telling me that I can't do this any more, or eat that any more. Do you know what? I've been doing okay up until now, so I'm just going to keep doing my thing. It would be wonderful if we could avoid getting cancer by living a vegetarian life free from diet carbonated beverages and radiation. The reality is though, we can't. Every day you hear stories of people who never smoked a day in their lives, never did anything to excess, were fit and healthy, yet fell victim to cancer. You can live your life however you want, but cancer doesn't care what you had for dinner - some people are, tragically, unlucky.
We all die. This is a universal truth. It totally freaks me out when I think of my own mortality, so it would be cool if I could pick up the paper without reading about something that I've been doing every day all my life that is now going to kill me. When that day does come, and it will, I want to feel like I've done everything I could have done in the time that I've had. Whether it be one year or fifty years from now, I want to feel like I've done what I was supposed to do, whatever that may be. I don't think it will bring me any pleasure knowing that I stopped eating steak and drinking my favourite juice because I thought it was going to kill me. In fact, I think I'd be pretty pissed off considering that I was dying despite giving up things that I enjoy. If we stopped doing everything that could potentially contribute to our deaths, then there wouldn't be anything left to do.
My advice? Well, it's not worth much as I'm not a doctor and I'm only 23, so I'm not exactly rolling in wisdom. Regardless, I'll share my life philosophy.
Enjoy your life as much as you can. If you like eating steak, eat it. Just don't eat a full cow in one sitting. Try to be balanced. Be as healthy as possible (this is hard as I have a cake addiction). Listen to your granny and actually do try that 'everything in moderation' thing. Make up your own rules and don't listen to what other people tell you. And that includes me.
Life's only absolute truth is that you should NEVER use alcopops as mixer for your vodka. You will spew every time, and this is not worth finding out for yourself. I've taken the bullet on this one for you.
Don't mention it.
