Great, just great. What else do you want to ruin for us, scientists?

We're no health experts over here, but by now we're fairly certain that everything we enjoy is either cancerous or potentially deadly. Like bacon and beer for example. Two of our absolute favorite things. Yeah, of course they're bad for you. Bacon and beer are literally the poster children of unhealthy eating habits. But as it turns out, they might do a lot more than just ruin your beach bod.

Scientists have found a new problem for people that love to chow down on processed meats and boozey treats — stomach cancer. Damn it.

Last week the American Cancer Institute released a report that analyzed 89 cancer studies that examined the cases of 77,000 people with stomach cancer. They found that about 1 in 7 cases of stomach cancer could have been prevented. In these preventable cases, eating too much processed meat like bacon and ham, drinking too much alcohol and being overweight were direct causes of stomach cancer. That's no good.

Does that mean we should stop drinking bacon infused vodka? Because that is pretty much all we drink these days.

The main findings of the incredibly depressing study were that:

– Consuming 1.8 ounces of processed meat a day increases your chances of getting stomach cancer by 18 percent. That's about two slices of bologna. So we're screwed. 

– Drinking 3 or more alcoholic drinks a day increases your risk of stomach cancer. Once again we're screwed.

– A five unit increase in body mass index increases the risk of stomach cancer by 23 percent. We might be screwed.

The study also found that smoking cigarettes increase your risk of stomach cancer. But don't cigarettes just give you every kind of cancer imaginable? This is hardly surprising.

Processed meats are likely bad for your stomach because of the high salt content and the huge number of preservatives packed into modern processed meats. While alcohol might increase your risk of stomach cancer because it may help carcinogens enter a person's stomach cells. They are less clear on why booze is so bad for your stomach. So we're going to sit here and drink while waiting for more information to come out on that front …

In response to these findings, Marji McCullough of the American Cancer Society says, "It does seem the more healthy things you do, the more benefit in terms of lowering risk."

Thanks Marji, thanks a lot. That's totally news to us. We will remind ourselves of that the next time we reach for that bottle of ham infused Fireball we have steeping in the office broom closet.

photo creddit: Swig