When you consider the efforts to fight cancer, the image that most readily springs to mind might be the graphic warning labels added to cigarette packets sold in the UK and other countries, which have helped curb smoking and its associated health risks. Similar warnings should be placed on meat and dairy products for the same reason. Unlike foods from plants that enhance our health, meat and dairy products have the same hazards as cigarette smoking, including increased risks of strokes, heart disease and cancer.

According to Cancer Research statistics, nearly 425,000 cases of cancer were diagnosed across the UK in 2010, the most recent year of complete statistics – and more than 150,000 Britons died from the disease that same year. The World Health Organisation has determined that dietary factors account for at least 30 per cent of all cancer in Western countries and up to 20 per cent in developing countries.

Processed meat, such as bacon, sausage, ham, and the like, is so strongly linked with bowel cancer – the second-largest cause of cancer death in the UK – that no one should ever eat it, according to a recent report by the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research, based on a systematic review of more than 1,000 papers on bowel cancer carried out at Imperial College London.