"These conclusions sound pretty terrifying. But nutrition researcher Ian Johnson, who works at the Institute of Food Research in the United Kingdom, says it’s important to remember that these classifications don’t show how much a given substance or behavior increases the risk of cancer. Instead, they indicate how certain the agency is that it could lead to cancer. Just because hot dogs are now in the same category as cigarettes doesn’t mean they’re both equally bad for you, as some headlines have suggested.

The WHO notes that eating 50 grams, or 1.75 ounces, of processed meat a day “increases the risk of colorectal cancer by about 18%.” For comparison, smoking a pack of cigarettes each day increases a person’s risk of developing lung cancer by about 2400%, according to a 2005 study in the British Journal of Cancer."