"Ever since the “war on nitrates” of the 1970s, US consumers have been more savvy about nitrates than those in Europe, and there is a lot of “nitrate-free bacon” on the market. The trouble, as Jill Pell remarks, is that most of the bacon labelled as nitrate-free in the US “isn’t nitrate-free”. It’s made with nitrates taken from celery extract, which may be natural, but produces exactly the same N-nitroso compounds in the meat. Under EU regulation, this bacon would not be allowed to be labelled “nitrate-free”.
“It’s the worst con I’ve ever seen in my entire life,” says Denis Lynn, the chair of Finnebrogue Artisan, a Northern Irish company that makes sausages for many UK supermarkets, including Marks & Spencer."
There's more nitrate in bacon than in plain pork belly to be sure, but there's actually not much of it, and the amounts you need to consume to have a vasoconstrictive effect seems high. Meanwhile: bacon (along with all cured meat and fish) is one of the very saltiest things we eat. Lots of people are salt-sensitive. This is probably what virtually all claims of "Chinese restaurant syndrome" (MSG sensitivity) turned out to be.
You should have no trouble finding pork belly. Try an experiment: just make your own bacon by filling a pan with kosher salt and pushing each side of the pork belly into it until they're all evenly and aggressively covered. Wrap the meat in plastic wrap, dump the pan, and put the meat back in it; leave it in the fridge for 3-4† days. Rinse it off and slice it. See if you get a headache from eating it.
(Home-cured bacon is good but if you don't add some of the carcinogen back to the cure, it's not safe to keep much longer than fresh meat is).
† That's a light cure, but long enough for this experiment, and if you're new to baconing and don't know what to look for, under-cured is better than over.
Confusing I know
All of which helps explain why it's so hard to find. :)
I hate to break it to you, but your relationship is already over.
According to the best available evidence, eating 50g per day of processed meat increases the relative risk of developing colorectal cancer by 18%. Given the prevalence and prognosis of colorectal cancer, this equates to about one premature death per 200 people as a result of eating processed meat.
Is processed meat somewhat bad for your health? Almost certainly. Is your daily bacon sandwich worth a 0.5% chance of a premature death? That's entirely your decision. I'm a vegetarian for ethical reasons, but that level of risk wouldn't faze me in the least if I really liked bacon. Factors like obesity, inactivity, smoking and alcohol use dwarf the risks posed by processed meat.
Constant fretting over small risks posed by our diet may be distracting us from clear messaging on big risks. I've heard countless people say "everything gives you cancer, so why worry about it?" or "scientists can't make their mind up about what you're supposed to eat, so I just ignore them". It isn't news that smoking, being obese or drinking too much alcohol are incredibly bad for your health, but it's a message that deserves repeating. I fear that those messages are being drowned out by a constant trickle of stories about "superfoods" and cancer risks.
The author of this article has previously made exactly this point in an article criticising the "clean eating" fad:
"When mainstream diets start to sicken people, it is unsurprising that many of us should seek other ways of eating to keep ourselves safe from harm. Our collective anxiety around diet was exacerbated by a general impression that mainstream scientific advice on diet – inflated by newspaper headlines – could not be trusted. First these so-called experts tell us to avoid fat, then sugar, and all the while people get less and less healthy. What will these “experts” say next, and why should we believe them?"
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/aug/11/why-we-...
That is a huge number.
Didn't even read the article, if anyone can run some numbers and clarify? (genuinely curious)
Some people will survive beyond five years but die of cancer anyway; I didn't bother factoring this in, partly because I'm lazy, partly because I couldn't find relevant data and partly because the median age at diagnosis for colorectal cancer is 67.
To me this is an absolute non-issue. Even if the research is free of bias and error (debatable), it's a tiny chance of cancer late in life. Spend your time worrying about almost anything else (diet, exercise, avoiding drugs), etc. and it will be orders of magnitude more important.
Apropos enough, this week’s episode of The People’s Pharamacy is about exactly this:
https://www.peoplespharmacy.com/2018/03/01/show-1112-how-and...
I realize it's a privileged position, but I'd gladly pay more for a salami/bacon that doesn't last as long to get rid of the carcinogen.
As a Waitrose shopping rich person you could be sold some 'Duchy Farms organic, free-range, humanely murdered meat' and buy in to the concept much like you might buy some other deluxe product on their shelves. However, if down the pub and ordering off the menu, would you care at all about what is in the pies, sausages and bacon? It would not be the place to go full-vegan-socially-awkward, particularly if you were hungry and someone else was paying the bill.
Most meat products are quite alien to our taste - ask a small child - but, along with alcoholic drinks, coffee, tobacco and much else that is quite abhorrent at first, we learn to go along with the rest of the human tribe and go along with it. There is a social aspect to eating meat, that allegedly amazing smell of bacon isn't just about satisfying one's cravings for such food, it is also about that social experience, even if eating on one's own.
Anyone who already eats sausages/bacon/burgers in canteen style environments or after a few beers from some roadside van is already saying don't care about lots of things, so some added nitrate scare counts for nothing. We would still be eating cow-brain on toast had it not been for how tragic BSE turned out.
That doesn't mean preservatives must be inherently bad or carcinogenic though - e.g canned foods, dehydrated fruit, while things are lost in the process it doesn't necessarily have to make the food toxic. But when you see a 20p cake you can bet it's going to be bad for you, not just because it's sugary, but because it's 20p and therefor must have a long shelf life, and cake isn't inherently long lived.
Products that claim to be "nitrate-free" are lying. They're exploiting the native nitrite/nitrate content of (extracts of) green vegetables rather than adding nitrates directly. Your body does not care about this difference, but your psychology does.
To be fair I think many people have been unconsciously fed misinformation - for instance I somehow picked up the "processed food == mixed up non-specific animal parts" thing without ever looking into it or thinking much.
I'm interested.. can you remember where you picked up the botulism thing? did you live through that anti-nitrates era or do you think you might have picked it up from more modern forms echoed around the web?
http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/blog/why-our-bacon-better
http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/blog/whole-story/i-love-baco...
> All of the bacon we sell is made without synthetic nitrates or nitrites.
Is that the dodge mentioned in the article where they actually do use nitrates from celery instead, which are just as bad even though they're natural?
[1] https://www.cancer.org/latest-news/world-health-organization...
After reading this article, I think I'm going to continue eating bacon and eggs every morning.
I saw this and wanted to say based on that experience, don't feel bad for eating bacon and eggs frequently. One thing I realized is that eggs are like a crazy superfood. An egg is something like 70 calories. But when you eat just one or two, and you can feel quite full for quite a long time. It is still weird to me how that works. And bacon... I eat it in reasonable portions frequently. Same with Italian meats like pancetta or salami.
There is this attitude to vilify certain foods but in my recent experience it's counter productive. It's much better to pay attention to the big picture than to swear you will never eat a specific food again.
Why not occasionally? I’m not going to stop eating bacon and ham. But I might stop keeping it regularly stocked at home.
To be honest? Because I really like having a routine. It's something that in a lot of ways I can't have, but I'm exactly the type of person who would benefit a lot from one.
So if cooking breakfast the same way every morning is a way to gain a shred of routine in my life, then I'm all in.
Thus the only guide I can trust is, how does this food make me feel when I eat it? Coca cola makes me spike then feel like shit, eggs make me feel happy and satiated, bacon and avocado too. Fried chicken makes me feel grimy and sluggish as does pasta and beer. Leafy greens make me feel amazing and make my stool less disgusting.
I can only imagine this is all that earlier humans had to go on and so I choose to listen to my body.
Also keep in mind that up to 200 years ago average life span was ~35, so cancer didn't really had time to develop.
You have stated in a common-sense way that ingesting huge quantities of sugar and trans-fats make you feel terrible, and ingesting leafy greens make you feel physically well; not that one should simply eat what their cravings tell them to. As sensitivities to certain foods can manifest themselves in different ways on an individual level, recommending that people pay close attention to the impact that certain foods have on their energy-levels, mood, and performance is sound advice.
0: It might happen for every post but I don't hover on my posts hitting refresh.
Yes. It's everywhere and costs about the same. But that may not be sufficient.
First: it is not true that the nitrates in green vegetables are entirely benign. All sodium nitrite potentially metabolizes to sodium nitrate; depending on what vegetables you consume and when you consume them, many have nitrate content; all nitrate you consume potentially metabolizes to N-nitroso compounds. People have claimed that other compounds in vegetables neutralize the formation of nitrosamines in the digestive tract; researchers have refuted that claim.
You knew you were in trouble when the article tried to make a clear dividing line between vegetables and meats, because it's not even surprising that vegetables can be carcinogenic. When cooked, potatoes, corn, flour, coffee, and peanuts all create significant amounts of acrylamide, which is also a known and potent carcinogen.
"Slow-cured, nitrate-free, artisan hams are one thing," says this article. What, exactly, does that mean? "Nitrate" and "slow-cured" are practically synonyms. Nitrates (the slow-acting form of curing salt) are what prevents the germination of botulism. Whether the ham cure uses "Prague Powder" curing salts or celery powder, the biological impact is the same --- but because people have been so alarmed about nitrosamines for so long, virtually everybody (falsely!) claims to sell "nitrate-free" product.
To a pretty good first approximation, everything delicious adds some additional exogenous risk of carcinogenesis. It may very well be that cured meats carry relatively more risk than other foods (it seems very unlikely that switching from store-brand bacon to artisanal ham will help you here). But this article, written by "British food writer" Bee Wilson, doesn't even include the word "milligram" --- but does think you should know that someone once found a correlation between hot dogs and brain cancer.
This is junk.
I think that this point is made in the article:
> It’s made with nitrates taken from celery extract, which may be natural, but produces exactly the same N-nitroso compounds in the meat. Under EU regulation, this bacon would not be allowed to be labelled “nitrate-free”.
You also say:
> prevents the germination of botulism
The article also talks about botulism, seems to claim it's overblown propaganda by the meat industry:
> Does making ham without nitrite lead to botulism? If so, it is a little strange that in the 25 years that Parma ham has been made without nitrites, there has not been a single case of botulism associated with it. Almost all the cases of botulism from preserved food – which are extremely rare – have been the result of imperfectly preserved vegetables, such as bottled green beans, peas and mushrooms. The botulism argument was a smokescreen.
Smoking, of course, introduces its own set of carcinogens.
I mean, yes, it increases your risk. And when we have solved many of the other high causes, it will have an obvious benefit for getting rid of it. So, very glad we know this. But right now? You are far more likely to be killed from other things than from exposure to bacon. Such that, statistically, it isn't where most people should worry about starting.
No, the studies are very clear. They were widely misreported.
There are two things: how good the evidence is, and how strong the effect is.
The evidence that processed red meat causes cancer is now as strong as the evidence that smoking causes cancer. We know that both do cause cancer.
But processed red meat doesn't cause much cancer. Smoking causes a lot of cancer.
That is, yes it increases the risk. It is such a weak source, though, that you are still better starting elsewhere, and are here unlikely to die from cancer if you eat these. Contrasted with smoking, where it is a strong influence.
We know a great deal about the mechanisms of action by which smoke inhalation and tobacco in particular cause cancer.
I don't think the distinction here is merely in strength of the effect.
Is nitrate/nitrite [1] free prosciutto okay?
EDIT: Apparently not. “Processed meats, which are transformed by salting, curing, or fermentation. This includes everything from hotdogs and bacon, to lunch meats like salami and prosciutto“ [2].
[1] Is there a single word for these?
[2] https://www.vox.com/2015/10/26/9616524/processed-meat-bacon-...
Also, "uncured" bacon is a lie; one of the main ingredients is celery powder, which contains - you guessed it - naturally occurring nitrites.
https://www.verywell.com/what-is-the-most-common-cancer-in-t...
So it's not a small chance.
https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/colorect.html
Approximately 4.3 percent of men and women will be diagnosed with colorectal cancer at some point during their lifetime, based on 2012-2014 data.
Your chance (roughly) goes from 4.3% to 5% if you eat bacon (and salumi, prosciutto, etc) regularly. Whether or not you personally consider this small or large, it seems like a pretty straightforward cost/benefit analysis.
Uh, no, it isn't. Does anybody even eat "a couple of rashers" of bacon per day?
A lot of times when something is in the news for contributing to cancer, you can look at the statistics and still conclude that very few people that do the thing will get cancer.
- red meat is classified as probably carcinogenic to humans
- processed red meat is classified as carcinogenic to humans (" there is convincing evidence that the agent causes cancer")
To avoid natrium nitrate you can by some ecological food.
The German version of Wikipedia has a skull symbol marking it as posinous on natrium nitrate https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natriumnitrit
No, it really isn't. This is pure sensationalism. I can't stand articles which try so desperately to scare me. It makes me even less likely to follow suggestions.
It's thought that disruption of biophoton communication is the mechanism by which phosphates promote cell undifferentiation, proliferation, and, eventually, cancer.
Now that I do think about it, the colour of bacon (well, as far as my broken eyes can tell!) is a bit... 'weird' for cured meat - I actually find the colour of parma ham more pleasing.
I just checked online at the local supermarket (Tesco in the UK), and it seems they don't even stock bacon made without nitrites, which is quite disappointing.
Here is a list of all substances absolutely known to cause cancer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IARC_Group_1_carcinoge...
If you've reached middle age without realizing that literally everyone in the world is lying and cheating to get ahead then you are not paying attention.
"How did it get this way?" Because Bacon didn't always cause cancer, Bacon doesn't cause cancer. Industrial processes cause cancer. The headline is misleading. The article even states that there are non-cancer-causing methods of manufacture. So whatever, keep eating bacon.
This is a great opportunity for safe meat producers to label their bacon "Non-Carcinogenic!" when they use the proper methods.
