The LA Times headline warned “Cancer Study Re-Indicts Red, Processed Meats: Colorectal malignancies rose by up to 50% among high-consumption group.”

The reporter gasped at how all it takes is 3 ounces a day if you’re a man or 2 ounces a day if you’re a woman to be in the high-consumption group that’s going to get colon cancer in two minutes.

Impending disasters make good headlines. Like traffic accidents, they get our attention.

But if you’re alarmed and ready to clear out your refrigerator, don’t bother.

The actual research article is quite different from what appeared in the newspaper.

For example, the relationship between meat consumption and colon cancer showed up mostly in men. Women were far less at risk. Not reported.

And when the researchers adjusted their statistics for factors like whether someone is a smoker, the relationship got even weaker. Not reported.

Still, there was some evidence that there is a risk from consuming red meat and processed meat.

But get this. For the study, processed meat included things like bacon, hot dogs, sausage, salami, and luncheon meat. Red meat included those same processed meats. When the researchers looked just at what you and I would call red meat served as a main course, the meat-cancer relationship disappeared. Not reported.

The researchers cited seven European studies that found no relationship between colon cancer and fresh meat, but did with processed meat. Was the meat processed using traditional or industrial methods? Not reported.

Since 1989, the European Union has banned the import of US beef because US cattle are pumped with growth hormones to fatten them. Unlike the Americans in the study, the Europeans were not exposed to hormone-laced meat. Not reported.

You’d think this would prompt someone to ask: is the risk from the meat or from what’s in it?

Certainly not from the researchers. From the reporters, then? Not likely. They report what the researchers conclude. With suitable headlines: the health equivalent of a ten-car pile-up.

You read the headline and think, “Red meat bad.” And if you read the newspaper article, you’ll be no more enlightened about what the research did and did not uncover.

This is a case where we needed a traffic cop to tell us, “Move along, move along. Nothing to see here.”