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 The hashtags #FreeBacon, #Bacongeddon and #JeSuisBacon were among
the top-trending topics worldwide on Twitter for a second straight
day.
Celebrities, politicians and ordinary consumers were reacting to
Monday's announcement by the WHO that eating processed meats
including hot dogs, sausages and bacon can cause colorectal cancer
in humans, and that red meat is also a likely cause of the disease.
The review by WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC)
also said there was some link between the consumption of red meat
and pancreatic cancer and prostate cancer. The IARC examined some
800 studies during a meeting of 22 health experts earlier this
month.
An analysis of social media sentiment by Thomson Reuters found that
social media participants were not happy about the WHO review.
Negative tweets outnumbered positive ones by a ratio of nearly 7 to
1 on Monday and 6.5 to 1 on Tuesday, according to the analysis tool
that tracks and aggregates positive, neutral and negative tweets
with hashtags #cancer and #bacon in order to generate a sentiment
score.
Fashion designer Kenneth Cole (@mr_kennethcole) on Tuesday tweeted
"Sugar is bad for you, Carbs are bad for you, and now so is #Bacon,
but don't worry about it, because that's bad for you too. #IfTheShoeFits"
Austrian politician Andrae Rupprechter (@Andrä Rupprechter) posted a
picture of himself on his Facebook page with a platter of cold cuts,
calling the WHO report a "farce."
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Germany's agriculture minister, Christian Schmidt, also said "no one
should be afraid if they eat a bratwurst (sausage) every now and
then."
WHO's initial tweet on Monday about its findings - "The
International Agency for Research on Cancer, the #cancer agency of
WHO, classified processed meat as carcinogenic to humans (Group 1)"
- had more than 3,040 retweets and 1,000 favorites on Tuesday.
(Writing by Angela Moon; Data complied by Connie Yee, Thomson
Reuters F&R; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
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