Annemarie Quill: Daily rush overlooks meaty matter

The nation is rising early to watch the rugby tomorrow morning. If the stress of the game isn't bad enough for our health, now we have to think twice about bacon and eggs for brekkie or throwing a few snarlers on the barbie.

The health risks of processed meats, such as bacon, ham and cured sausages, have been ranked in the same category as cigarettes and asbestos in a new report by the World Health Organisation.

The report said every 50g of processed meat eaten each day - equivalent to two slices of bacon or one cured sausage - increased the chance of bowel cancer by 18 per cent. I took pleasure in forwarding this to a colleague who is currently on a no carbs diet and has been extolling the pleasures of bacon for breakfast and steadfastly resisting any sugar.

While it is important to be across the latest in health and nutrition research, and to follow a healthy balanced diet, it would be too restrictive to cut every single "bad" or "risky" food type out of our diets.

If you chow down hot dogs and meatlover pizzas all day, every day, you might be in trouble, but the occasional sausage is not going to kill you. Hopefully.

I am sure there are healthy sausage alternatives that you could make at home rather than shop-bought ones. I am sure they are very tasty.

And if Nadia Lim was to come to our house and make them tomorrow morning they would go down a treat.

But I won't be setting my alarm clock at 3am instead of 5am to knock up a set of homemade best mince and herb sausages. I would rather starve.

Therein lies the problem with the list of risks for cancer. Our increasingly fast lives leave little time and energy for taking time to do enjoyable things in life, like spending time with family making food from scratch from fresh ingredients.

Instead we shovel down something fast as we run from one job to the next. Our endless rushing through life is sending some to early deaths, with people using carcinogenic props to cope with stress such as cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, and now, we are told, sausages.

Sausage doesn't have the same bad-boy image though does it?

I can't imagine Noel Gallagher singing about cigarettes and chorizo instead of cigarettes and alcohol.

Fast-food chain Wendy's is doing its bit to put the badass into bacon. It already has the Baconator and Son of Baconator, both of which have more than half a million followers on Facebook and Twitter combined.

In the US this year, Wendy's announced it would be delivering bacon in a new way on fries, launching for a limited time Baconator Fries, described as "a delicious blend of warm cheddar cheese sauce, freshly cooked Applewood Smoked Bacon and shredded cheddar cheese drizzled over Wendy's natural-cut fries".

A video series called Bacon: Scared Straight launched the promotion. The videos feature bacon puppets voiced over by cartoon actor Billy West, the voice of Woody Woodpecker, which tongue-in cheek-warn "at-risk" bacon teens of bacon-related dangers that might prevent them from becoming Baconator worthy.

Given the teen market Wendy's appeals to, it is concerning Wendy's in Christchurch has applied for a liquor licence between the times of 8am and midnight, meaning people will be able to get beer or wine with their burgers. At breakfast.

While many Kiwis might have a sneaky beer or bubbles tomorrow morning with their bacon butties, as a regular occurrence it is not a good idea - for our communities, for our waistlines or general health. It could well fast-track us to an early death.

Now that is really bad. As Noel Gallagher would say.

"Is it my imagination? Or have I finally found something worth living for?

"I was looking for some action, But all I found was cigarettes and alcohol."

And sausages.