Nitrites in meat products cause cancer

#1

Finally vindication for what I’ve been saying for a decade! :grinning:

Bacon should only be pig + salt with maybe some herbage or spice to taste. Same with salami and jerky and any ‘processed’ meats. They should not have sugar or highly toxic antibiotics. :bacon:

Nitrites kill off botulism causing bacteria so they are very effective killing off other beneficial bacteria too. What reduces clostridium (botulinum) is not storing the meat too long and storing it the correct way - eg dehydrate, salt etc. Nitrates are used because they are cost effective, enable shipping of the product and add that lovely pink hue to the meat (oxidised meat gets grey which consumers apparently won’t buy).

Love that the Guardian isn’t just bleating vegan agenda and publishing this. https://www.theguardian.com/food/2018/dec/29/nitrites-used-in-bacon-cured-meats-linked-to-cancer-experts-warn

(Carl Keller) #2

You can buy nitrate free bacon if you choose but nitrates are much more common in vegetables than they are in processed bacon. Something like 80% of your nitrates come from vegetables and nitrates actually do play a good role in human health.

Most of the advice that people base the idea that nitrates cause cancer comes from a 1970’s flawed study on rats. Nitrates got a really bad name from this study.

The U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP), which is considered the “gold standard” in determining whether substances cause cancer, completed a multi-year study in which rats and mice were fed high levels of sodium nitrite. The study found that nitrite was not associated with cancer. NTP maintains a list of chemicals found to be carcinogenic. Sodium nitrite is not on that list. 1

http://www.meatmythcrushers.com/myths/myth-nitrite-in-cured-meat-linked-to-cancer.php

It says there is evidence that consumption of processed meats containing these chemicals results in 6,600 bowel cancer cases every year in the UK – four times the fatalities on British roads – and is campaigning for the issue to be taken as seriously as sugar levels in food.

This paragraph from your article is ominous correlation. Unless the people in this study, if it was a study, ate nothing but bacon and the got bowel cancer, it would mean something. That’s quite impossible. Certainly there are other factors involved that led to them getting bowel cancer and bacon-laden nitrates are taking the blame. It’s like going into a bar and seeing people drinking and noticing that 90% of them are smoking. By this logic, we can correlate that drinking causes smoking…

#3

I’ve been having bacon and eggs due to lack of better ideas. But I know I need to address bacon.

Real bacon, homemade bacon fair enough but industrially produced it ain’t gonna be the same thing.

But what’s a good bacon replacement?

(bulkbiker) #4

Pork belly?

(bulkbiker) #5

But it is kind of a wider vegan agenda as is much of the Guardian these days unfortunately… also most surprised to see Aseem Malhotra’s name there… well to be honest I’m pretty disappointed. I’ve tried tweeting him to see if he has been misquoted but I fear his lack of response means its what he thinks which will be a shame…

(Banting & Yudkin & Atkins & Eadeses & Cordain & Taubes & Volek & Naiman & Bikman ) #6

I’ve got some bad news for you.

Nitrate free bacon has nitrates. They are from celery salt and such, and are what people used to cure meats hundreds of years ago, before you could buy Prague Powders 1 and 2.

The reduction of botulism is not the only reason to add nitrates. There are other food safety and shelf stability issues.

If you want to be completely clear of nitrates, you will be eating salt pork at best. Or just say goodbye to bacon entirely.

Or, maybe, don’t eat bacon as a major food group at every meal. Or reduce ya carbs and starve the bowel cancer. The vegetarian agenda is so focused on our collective butts. Poop quality, volume and timing, and bowel cancer, and so on. Honestly get off my ass, vegetarians.

Sad to see Dr. Malhottra going down this path, though Pioppi is not high in bacon.

(David Cooke) #7

Bacon was traditionally made with salt. That’s it. And that’s the way I do it, very easy. Take a piece of pork, put it in a wooden box with lots of salt.
The addition of nitrites increases the shelf life of bacon and isn’t necessary for smaller quantities.

(Bunny) #8

Organic nitrates found in veggies and the kind purposely put in meat are bit different being the organic is much worse for you (more complex) :crazy_face: than the man-made stuff and from what I understand the meat industry scientist charged with developing the recommendations about adding the nitrites/nitrates to the meat recommend the least amount (properly balanced) of nitrites/nitrates be placed in the processed meat as a preservative. And as I pointed out on a previous post if your glutathione intake or endogenous production is adequate it protects you any way from the possible hyped-up carcinogenic properties of in-organic nitrites/nitrates…

Quit dissing the bacon! Lol! :bacon::cut_of_meat::poultry_leg::meat_on_bone:

A comparison of organic and inorganic nitrates/nitrites: The pharmacodynamic differences are even greater; while organic nitrates have potent acute effects causing vasodilation, inorganic nitrite’s effects are more subtle and dependent on certain conditions. However, in chronic use, organic nitrates are considerably limited by the development of tolerance and endothelial dysfunction, whereas inorganic nitrate/nitrite may compensate for diminished endothelial function, and tolerance has not been reported. Also, while inorganic nitrate/nitrite has important cytoprotective effects against ischaemia-reperfusion injury, continuous use of organic nitrates may increase injury. While there are concerns that inorganic nitrate/nitrite may induce carcinogenesis, direct evidence of this in humans is lacking. While organic nitrates may continue to dominate the therapeutic arena, this may well change with the increasing recognition of their limitations, and ongoing discovery of beneficial effects and specific advantages of inorganic nitrate/nitrite. …”…More

(Bob M) #9

I cannot believe you actually believe this garbage. The vast majority of this “evidence” is based on epidemiology, which CANNOT be used to provide causation. Moreover, there are as many or more nitrates is those oh-so-healthy vegetables:

(Banting & Yudkin & Atkins & Eadeses & Cordain & Taubes & Volek & Naiman & Bikman ) #10

Uhm, no one is doing a 17th century, pre-saltpeter long cure of pork belly anymore. And one wonders if we’d recognize it as bacon, given our familiarity with other long salt cures, like prosciutto and speck.

I like a shelf stable bacon. If I make my own, I make five pounds, minimum to make it worth my time investment. If I buy from the store, I expect three months shelf life in my fridge.

(Bob M) #11

This is the type of complete garbage they’re basing their evidence on:

https://neurosciencenews.com/meat-mania-9594/

“Experiments in rats by the same researchers showed mania-like hyperactivity after just a few weeks on diets with added nitrates.”

Humans aren’t rats.

“Yolken, trained as an infectious disease expert, was originally interested in whether exposure to infections such as viruses transmitted through food might be linked to any psychiatric conditions. Between 2007 and 2017, as part of an ongoing study, he and colleagues collected demographic, health and dietary data on 1,101 individuals aged 18 through 65 with and without psychiatric disorders. Approximately 55 percent of the participants were female and 55 percent were Caucasian, with 36 percent identifying as African-American.”

This is worthless data. It’s likely collected by food frequency questionnaires, which produce garbage in. Again, it’s epidemiological evidence, which CANNOT prove causation. It likely is measuring things like income disparity, people who eat against the recommendations versus those who eat with them, healthy user effect, so many confounders as to be freaking useless.

Until there’s an RCT with one group with no “processed meat”, and one without, it’s worthless.

(Bunny) #12

Nitrites/nitrates: a vascular-dialator?

Also, I remember story that was featured on a local news broadcast in some state where a gentlemen was shown flying kites with his dogs following him in the background who’s veins and arteries were so clogged with arterial plaque and calcium build up (he was beyond help or medical intervention; prognosis was terminal) that he went on a bacon (high fat meat) and egg only diet (carnivore like diet?) and guess what? He completely reversed it (clean as a whistle); I could not track down that news report because it was an extremely long-time ago…

He also wrote a book about it? (why he was featured on that local news broadcast)

My memory fails me on this because of how long ago it was!

(Bob M) #13

Sorry, epi evidence CAN be used to prove causation, but requires Bradford-Hill criteria to be met or very high correlation, such as 6 or 7 times (600 to 700 percent the risk. That was not met here.

(Ken) #14

Interesting, as well as tedious how this Vegan Claptrap keeps getting recycled.

You might as well say nitrated meat is especially bad when you have several undigested pounds of it permanently in your Colon.

(Scott) #15

This just in, Broccoli causes cancer because of high amounts of nitrates.

#16

if you actually read what I posted I’m not dissing bacon. lol

#17

hey, thanks for the over explaining.

Thanks for suggesting I can buy nitrate free bacon - like I couldn’t possibly figure that out myself.

I posted the article, which I didn’t write, to show that there are different messages getting out there about meat consumption with are not prime vegan or industry based.

#18

yep, that’s what we do to. Also found some good butchers that offer the just pork and salt option. We also make our own jerky with maybe some herbage and a bit of chilli. delish.

If I eat anything with preservative 250 or 251 (NaNO2 or NO3) I immediately get a rash and feel ill. It took ages to find out it was the NOx’s. Glad the addition of these preservatives is getting a looking into and getting published in a usually pro-vegan paper.

(G. Andrew Duthie) #19

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(G. Andrew Duthie) #21

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