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What’s wrong with eating jerky every day?

modeless 6y ago
Nutrition is controversial, obviously. It depends how you feel about red meat and saturated fat, plus it's high in sodium. Depending on the brand it can have sugar added, nitrates, and it may be smoked which makes things carcinogenic. It's also quite expensive, and production is bad for the environment if you care about that. Fine in moderation IMO, but I wouldn't prescribe it for daily use.
kabouseng 6y ago
Jerky easily gets stuck between the teeth, requiring flossing to get out. Children ain't great at daily flossing, leading to tooth cavities.
- wincy 6y ago
  I thought sugar was the only thing that actually caused cavities?
  - indecisive_user 6y ago
    As I understand it, sugar feeds the main bacterial catalyst for cavities (s. Mutans), but food stuck between the teeth provides them protection from the mechanical forces of brushing.
DanBC 6y ago
We know that eating lots of processed red meat will slightly increase your risk of certain cancers. It's a small increase of a small risk. https://www.uicc.org/news/how-interpret-iarc-findings-red-and-processed-meat-cancer-risk-factors https://www.uicc.org/news/how-interpret-iarc-findings-red-an... > The 18% increase means the risk of developing bowel cancer is 1.18 times higher for those who eat 50 grams of processed meat per day compared to those who eat none. The figure 1.18 is known as “relative risk”. > Put this way, the increase is quite small. By contrast, men who smoke cigarettes have about 20 times the risk of developing lung cancer as men who do not smoke. Expressed as a percentage, the increase in risk due to smoking is 1,900% [...] > Cancer Research UK (link is external) presented the risks (link is external) in this way: "Out of every 1,000 people in the UK, about 61 will develop bowel cancer at some point in their lives. Those who eat the lowest amount of processed meat are likely to have a lower lifetime risk than the rest of the population (about 56 cases per 1,000 low meat-eaters)."

Nutrition is controversial, obviously. It depends how you feel about red meat and saturated fat, plus it's high in sodium. Depending on the brand it can have sugar added, nitrates, and it may be smoked which makes things carcinogenic. It's also quite expensive, and production is bad for the environment if you care about that. Fine in moderation IMO, but I wouldn't prescribe it for daily use.

kabouseng 6y ago

Jerky easily gets stuck between the teeth, requiring flossing to get out. Children ain't great at daily flossing, leading to tooth cavities.

wincy 6y ago
I thought sugar was the only thing that actually caused cavities?
- indecisive_user 6y ago
  As I understand it, sugar feeds the main bacterial catalyst for cavities (s. Mutans), but food stuck between the teeth provides them protection from the mechanical forces of brushing.

DanBC 6y ago

We know that eating lots of processed red meat will slightly increase your risk of certain cancers. It's a small increase of a small risk. https://www.uicc.org/news/how-interpret-iarc-findings-red-and-processed-meat-cancer-risk-factors https://www.uicc.org/news/how-interpret-iarc-findings-red-an... > The 18% increase means the risk of developing bowel cancer is 1.18 times higher for those who eat 50 grams of processed meat per day compared to those who eat none. The figure 1.18 is known as “relative risk”. > Put this way, the increase is quite small. By contrast, men who smoke cigarettes have about 20 times the risk of developing lung cancer as men who do not smoke. Expressed as a percentage, the increase in risk due to smoking is 1,900% [...] > Cancer Research UK (link is external) presented the risks (link is external) in this way: "Out of every 1,000 people in the UK, about 61 will develop bowel cancer at some point in their lives. Those who eat the lowest amount of processed meat are likely to have a lower lifetime risk than the rest of the population (about 56 cases per 1,000 low meat-eaters)."