Death by Deli Meat? Keep Cancer-Causing Foods Out of Schools

Do you live in a cancer hot spot?

Colorectal cancer kills more than 50,000 Americans per year, making it the second leading cause of death from cancer in the United States. But the toll is especially high in certain regions of the country. Recently, researchers with the American Cancer Society discovered three geographic regions in the U.S. with exceptionally high death rates from colorectal cancer—up to 40 percent higher than the national average in some cases: the Lower Mississippi Delta, west Central Appalachia, and eastern Virginia and North Carolina.

But what if these deaths were preventable?

Late last year, the World Health Organization declared that processed meats such as hot dogs, pepperoni, bacon, sausage, and deli meats are carcinogenic to humans. The authors highlighted a meta-analysis that found each 50 gram portion of processed meat—approximately the size of a hot dog or two strips of bacon—eaten daily increases the risk of colorectal cancer by 18 percent.

For the month of March—which is also Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month— the Physicians Committee sought to raise awareness of the link between diet and colorectal cancer in the regions of the country most affected by the disease. We placed billboards in 12 cities located in the six states with the highest colorectal cancer death rates: Mississippi, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Nevada, and West Virginia.

In an effort to prevent future fatalities, the campaign focuses on school districts who routinely serve hot dogs, deli meat, bacon, sausage, and pepperoni pizza to students. The billboards feature the image of a skull and crossbones formed from a sausage patty and hot dogs and warn “Cancer-Causing Foods Don’t Belong in Schools. Processed Meats Cause Cancer. DropTheHotDog.org.”

The Physicians Committee also reached out to the food service directors in each of the 12 cities and sent them a toolkit with information on the dangers of processed meats, tips for removing processed meats from school meals, and recipe swaps.

Would you like to join us in preventing future fatalities from colorectal cancer? Share our processed meat toolkit with your food service director and sign our petition asking the U.S. Department of Agriculture to stop offering processed meats in the National School Lunch Program. And once you’ve dropped the hot dog, be sure to celebrate by making a healthy, fun alternative: the banana dog!