When it comes to the summer months, many people think of things such as ice cream, swimming at the beach and warm, sunny weather. Another item that is synonymous with summer is barbequed food. But suppose all those barbequed favorites had negative repercussions for your health?

The Bad Side of Barbeque

According to a team from the University of Texas (UT), people who consume sizable amounts of grilled foods face an elevated risk of kidney cancer. The UT team reached this conclusion upon surveying the dietary habits and renal health
of over 1350 adults. The study participants were subdivided into two group – healthy subjects (699 people) and those with renal cell carcinoma, a form of kidney cancer (659 individuals).

The study’s findings won’t be pleasing to meat lovers – not only was heavy meat consumption linked to renal cancer risk, but so were meats that were flame grilled. Regarding the latter conclusion, the UT team found that the process of grilling meat had the effect of creating carcinogens, or cancer-causing substances.

Food For Thought

When widening the scope to include processed meat in general, the UT group still found an increased risk of cancer. Specifically, bowel cancer was 17 percent likelier to afflict subjects who ate the greatest amounts of such products.

In summarizing his team’s work, lead researcher Dr Xifeng Wu stated flatly that the report’s conclusions “support reducing consumption of meat, especially meat cooked at high temperatures or over an open flame as a public health intervention to reduce RCC risk and burden.” The UT study appeared in the bi-monthly journal of the American Cancer Society.