"The relative risk reported by University of Hawaii researcher Dr. Ute, is below the standard threshold for concern. This study did not show a strong relationship between the variables that were analyzed.

Moreover, the headline on the press release issued about this study stands in stark contrast to one published just two weeks ago by the Harvard School of Public Health. That study was published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute and reached an opposite conclusion: Meat consumption was NOT associated with pancreatic cancer.

This study is an epidemiological study, which means it involved clipboards, calculators and interviews with people about foods eaten in the past. It was not a laboratory-based study and therefore does not provide scientific explanation about the mechanism of observed effect. Epidemiological studies also are not capable of proving cause and effect.

Consumers should use caution in reacting to this study because it appears we are facing the swinging of the diet and health, good food/bad food pendulum. Sometimes, through mere statistical chance, foods are implicated in one epidemiological study and exonerated in the next one. The most important fact is that the larger body of evidence has shown that processed meats are a healthy part of a balanced diet.

In the constantly changing diet and health environment, the wisest course of action is a balanced diet and plenty of exercise as prescribed by the U.S. Dietary Guidelines."

meatami/

Last year, scientists inside and outside the agency questioned the figure the CDC issued in a study that attributed 400,000 deaths a year to mostly weight-related causes and said excess weight would soon overtake tobacco as the top U.S. killer. The CDC then admitted making a calculation error and lowered its estimate three months ago to 365,000. The new study attributes 111,909 deaths to obesity, but then subtracts the benefits of being modestly overweight, and arrives at the 25,814 figure.

According to the new estimate, excess weight would drop behind car crashes and guns to seventh place but the CDC is unwilling to make that new ranking official, which underlines the controversy on how the health effects of obesity are calculated.

CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding says they will not use the new figure in their public awareness campaigns because of the uncertainty in calculating the health effects of being overweight.

The study - an analysis of mortality rates and body-mass index, or BMI -is published in the current edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association.