Making people aware of their cancer risk
Tags: bowel cancer, cancer prevention awareness, processed meat
Press coverage: helping raise cancer awareness
Three years ago WCRF commissioned YouGov to carry out the first survey of cancer risk awareness, asking people “Which, if any, of the following do you think increases your risk of getting cancer?”
We asked the question because we wanted to find out how much people knew about the lifestyle factors behind cancer risk, as well as measure our success in raising awareness over the following years.
The January 2009 poll showed that only 30 per cent of respondents thought eating processed meat increased their risk of getting cancer, while 59 per cent selected “eating a poor diet”, 44 per cent believed not being physically active was linked to cancer risk and 56 per cent thought being overweight was a factor.
Well, last week we asked the same questions and the results are below. By far the greatest rise in awareness is in relation to processed meat – where awareness levels rose by more than a third from 30 per cent to 41 per cent.
| Jan 2009 | Feb 2012 | |
| Smoking
Eating a poor diet Being overweight Lack of physical activity Eating processed meat None of these Don’t know |
88%
59% 56% 42% 30% 2% 6% |
88%
62% 61% 44% 41% 2% 5% |
This is important because there is convincing evidence from the scientific studies examined for WCRF’s 2007 Expert Report that processed meat increases the risk of bowel cancer.
Over the last few years there has been a lot of publicity about processed meat – some of it sparked by WCRF, such as last year’s Continuous Update Project confirmation of the link between processed meat and bowel cancer – but also from other sources, such as the government’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition.
These have no doubt helped raise awareness about the dangers of processed meat which, in our 10 Recommendations for Cancer Prevention, we advise people not to eat at all.
As for the other cancer risk factors, YouGov also recorded rises in levels of awareness levels, if not to the same degree as for processed meat.
Overall, we are happy that progress is being made in making the public aware of the risks of certain lifestyle elements and we’ll continue working hard to expand on this success.
