Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed laced into one of America's most beloved foods—bacon—comparing the breakfast food to "plutonium" and arguing that both the breakfast meat and the "stuff we make nuclear weapons out of" cause cancer and put public health at risk, according to a transcript of one of his since-deleted YouTube videos.
Describing bacon and other meats like baloney and salami as "class 1" carcinogens, El-Sayed said: "You know what else is a class 1 carcinogen? Plutonium. That's right. The stuff that we make nuclear weapons out of. Yeah, that's also a carcinogen."
"Now, how come bacon and plutonium are in the same class?" he continued in the July 2023 video. "Well, because it just comes down to the quality of evidence. Research has demonstrated that both of these things, bacon and plutonium, are definitively linked in well-designed, well-executed population studies with cancer." The video has since been made private, but the Washington Free Beacon reviewed an archive of its transcript.
The unearthed transcript provides the latest example of El-Sayed criticizing popular American pastimes, something that now extends to food. In other since-removed YouTube videos, El-Sayed declared that "fireworks suck" and "just aren't worth it" due to air quality concerns, CNN reported. He also questioned whether football could be "ethical," arguing that narratives justifying slavery and other evils were "echoed in the ethos of football."
Bacon is "an all-time favorite food," according to Meat+Poultry magazine, which cited a report from food and beverage market research firm Datassential showing that 80 percent of consumers reported "liking or loving" the meat. Fireworks are nearly as popular—75 percent of U.S. adults said they either "like a lot" or "somewhat like" fireworks, according to a 2021 YouGov poll. Football, meanwhile, "has been the top sport in Gallup polling since 1972," the pollster reported in 2024. Forty-one percent of adults identified football as their favorite sport to watch that year, giving it a 31-point lead over baseball.
El-Sayed's campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on his stance on bacon and what he intended to do about the meat's apparent threat to public health.
The World Health Organization's cancer research agency added "processed meat"—any meat that has been smoked, cured, or salted—to its list of Group 1 carcinogens in 2015. That classification "is used when there is sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in humans," according to the agency. Other Group 1 carcinogens include plutonium, asbestos, and cigarettes, though the WHO's website on processed meats notes that "does NOT mean that they are all equally dangerous," as the classification describes "the strength of the scientific evidence about an agent being a cause of cancer, rather than assessing the level of risk." El-Sayed made a similar point in his video, noting that there is a "bit of a difference" between bacon and plutonium because the "magnitude of risk" for bacon is smaller.
There are disagreements, however, about the strength of the studies linking bacon to cancer. Many of them are "observational nutritional studies," meaning "researchers look at what people report eating then look at what health outcomes happen over time," according to the Chicago-based obesity medicine specialist Dr. Tony Hampton, who outlined "limitations" with such studies.
"People do not report food perfectly, and bacon usually does not travel alone," Hampton said in an April 2026 video that dubbed bacon "one of the most misunderstood foods in modern nutrition." "The person eating more bacon may also be eating more fries, more soda, fewer vegetables, less fiber, drinking more alcohol, moving less, and sleeping poorly. So when you see an association, you have to ask, 'Is it the bacon? Or is the bacon just hanging out with the usual suspects?'"
El-Sayed, who will face Republican Mike Rogers in the November general election after narrowly defeating Democratic congresswoman Haley Stevens in last week's primary, spent years as a prolific podcaster and YouTuber. Though the move helped pad his pockets—El-Sayed reported earning nearly $300,000 in "additional income" in 2025, some of which he said came from his podcast, America Dissected—it has also been the source of unflattering headlines during his Senate campaign.
In addition to his videos bashing bacon, fireworks, and football, El-Sayed "argued that the southern border was not among Americans' five biggest concerns" and "floated replacing the Second Amendment's right to bear arms with a constitutional right to health care" in since-deleted clips, according to CNN.
Many of El-Sayed's podcast episodes and YouTube videos were sponsored by the left-wing Marguerite Casey Foundation. El-Sayed personally read ads from the foundation touting the book Let This Radicalize You: Organizing in the Revolution of Reciprocal Care, which encourages violent rioting and claims the U.S. government "kills untold millions," the Free Beacon reported.
El-Sayed also paused his crusade against cancer to read an ad from the foundation promoting former NFL quarterback and anti-police activist Colin Kaepernick's 2023 book Our History Has Always Been Contraband: In Defense of Black Studies. "Students suffered nearly 1,500 book bans targeting books featuring LGBTQ+ themes, characters of color, and books on race and racism during the first half of the school year," El-Sayed said. "Book bans are a threat to democracy, but there's a growing movement of young people and educators fighting back," he continued before highlighting the Kaepernick book.
El-Sayed's video was titled "Diet Coke Causes Cancer?! (eh.)" It noted that the WHO had ruled the artificial sweetener aspartame a carcinogen, but one that El-Sayed was less concerned with, because it was only a "class 2B carcinogen, along with things like aloe vera."
The consumption of pork products is prohibited by Sharia law, which El-Sayed proclaimed an "obligation" to follow until the day he died, the Free Beacon reported.
