Let’s Declare Baseball’s Opening Day Strike Out Cancer Day
|April 2, 2013|
It is opening day for Major League Baseball teams this week, kicking off the season of increased colorectal cancer risk for baseball fans. The National Hot Dog and Sausage Council estimates that baseball fans will eat more than 20 million hot dogs during the 2013 season. But consuming even just one hot dog a day significantly increases the risk of colorectal cancer—which will kill more than 50,000 people this year.
The Boomstick—a 2-foot hot dog—at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington, Texas, is an extreme example of baseball’s deadly addiction to hot dogs:
But even the standard-sized hot dogs sold at nearly every stadium will increase baseball fans’ odds of striking out from cancer: Just one 50-gram serving of processed meat—hot dogs, sausage, bacon, ham—consumed daily increases the risk of colorectal cancer, on average, by 21 percent, according to a large number of studies, including the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) study.
It’s time we declare baseball’s opening day Strike Out Cancer Day and remind millions of baseball fans that hot dogs increase colorectal cancer risk. Leave the hot dogs behind this baseball season. Your behind will thank you for it.