My father died from pancreatic cancer on January 31, 2001. This week at work, a list was sent out for some possible risk factors for pancreatic cancer. My father smoked for most of his adult life. He had quit about 4 years before he died, and I'm not sure that smoking was the complete cause of his cancer, but I'm sure it didn't help. About six months before he was diagnosed with cancer, he was diagnosed with diabetes--which I also just learned is common before a pancreatic cancer diagnosis.

Something else that my family has researched is a correlation between eating processed meats and pancreatic cancer. Even before knowing this, I've dabbled with being a vegetarian, and also with not eating red meat. I don't eat a lot of red meat, but I'm not a good vegetarian because I don't like enough vegetables, but I'm trying.

I found this link today of mystery meat pictures. If you don't want to avoid processed meats after looking at this, you might need another type of psychological evaluation because it's pretty disgusting.

One of the main ingredients to avoid is sodium nitrite (also linked to leukemia). It keeps normally gray looking hotdogs a nice pink color.

I trust God completely for every day that he's given me, but I want to try to be a good steward of this temple instead of polluting it purposefully.

Please read labels when you can. And if these things are on the label, put the item back down: high fructose corn syrup, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, and sodium nitrite. I'm sure the list could get a lot longer, but those three are easiest for me to remember.

I included links so you can read about it if you have time.

I can't get that picture of the magnified processed stuff out of my head. Blech!


This entry was posted on Friday, January 18, 2008 and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1 comments:

    gL said...

    HFCS is highly fattening because it is sugar but not registered on the FDA label because it does not cause an insulin spike. The problem is that it is very hard to find items that don't have them without going to the organics aisle.

  1. ... on 2:09 PM