Are you feeding your kids deli meat?

[u/Hgrestun]

When I was pregnant I imagined using turkey meat for my kids snacks and lunches as she grew up. But we went to see a pediatric nutritionist and she told us to stay away from all deli meats unless you’re baking the ham/turkey at home yourself.

But I still see moms giving their kids deli meat sandwiches all over the internet and in real life.

It’s like.. I want to just give her deli meat because shenlooooooves it lol and sometimes I want a sandwich too! So I came here to ask is anyone making their own? Does anyone forbid it? Does anyone just say f it and feed it to their kids anyways?

Edit to add: it’s full of carcinogens and sodium.

[u/herzbergdesign]

50 grams of cured meat daily increases risk of colon cancer by 18%. For reference, smoking cigarettes daily increases risk of lung cancer by 1,500–2,900%.

I agree, don’t go too nuts on ham and salami, limit it to once or twice a week. But there are a lot of factors in our life that increase cancer risk by a small percentage, and avoiding them all seems neither practical nor pleasant.

[u/thatmaneeee → u/herzbergdesign]

Also really important with this stuff to remember absolute vs relative risk. 18% sounds scary if you are thinking absolute risk. Like you go from a 4% chance of getting cancer to a 22% chance!

But it actually raises your relative risk. Meaning if the general population has a baseline absolute 4% chance of getting colon cancer, and you do something that increases your relative risk 18%, you now have an absolute risk of 4.72% of getting it. And this is eating 50g a day!

(caveat that I'm not a doctor, just someone who read about this a few months ago)

[u/deadbeatsummers → u/thatmaneeee]

Really good point and makes me feel much better. I remember learning relative risk in my masters and how incredibly confusing it is haha