The headlines were terrible. They were linking cancer and red meat and smoking.

Here's one example of terrible reporting: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/oct/26/bacon-ham-sa...

> Processed meats rank alongside smoking as cancer causes – WHO

> UN health body says bacon, sausages and ham among most carcinogenic substances along with cigarettes, alcohol, asbestos and arsenic

This headline is mixing up 2 things: the quality of the evidence (which is now as good as the evidence we have that smoking etc cause cancer) and the strength of the effect (smoking is very much more harmful than eating red meat).

It's frustrating that the news reporting was so bad, because it's caused people to reject the science: we know, with a high level of confidence, that processed red meat can cause cancer, although it probably doesn't cause very many cases of cancer.