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I really hate the ambiguity of "processed meat". What does processed mean, and what's the carcinogen? Is frozen uncooked seasoned meat bad? This is actually a
by TillE 6y ago
I really hate the ambiguity of "processed meat". What does processed mean, and what's the carcinogen? Is frozen uncooked seasoned meat bad?
This is actually a situation where labeling would help, because there's a fair bit of grey area that consumers otherwise need to navigate themselves.
- thereisnospork 6y agoThis is such a pet peeve of mine. 'Processed' is not a classification: food is made up of molecules (chemicals), please describe it on those terms[0] /end rant. [0] w.r.t. its biochemical effects on e.g. the human body. A steak's flavor doesn't need to be couched in terms of its chemistry.
- goodluckchuck 6y agoAnd carcinogens aren’t limited to molecules. Heat, friction, time, etc. also cause cancer.
- jkinudsjknds 6y agoI think it's pretty reasonable to say that unprocessed meat is just an animal cut up into pieces, while processed meat is everything else (e.g. almost everything in a supermarket). Describing food via chemicals only isn't especially useful or easy to parse.
- ip26 6y agoIt's a bad label, but as far as I can tell it basically means cured meat preserved with nitrates. To your specific question, if the meat needs freezing, it's probably not cured and therefore fine. The current wave, by the way, is to hide the nitrates by using "celery salt". It may come from celery, but it has the exact same effect.
- NikolaeVarius 6y agoDoes celery ship with the warning/all the vegetables that contain nitrates?
- ip26 6y ago1) The nitrates aren't a problem by themselves, they react with compounds in the meat during the curing process to form nitrosamines. 2) Celery powder (sorry, apparently I mixed up the salt and the powder) is concentrated.
- gruez 6y ago>Celery powder (sorry, apparently I mixed up the salt and the powder) is concentrated. This is still not correct. According to a google search celery naturally contains high levels of nitrate. They harvest the juice and use bacterial culture to convert it to nitrites for use in curing.
- NikolaeVarius 6y agoCigarettes create carcinogens through the act of burning them to consume it. Your point?
- dundarious 6y agoThe WHO's definition from their classification of red meat and processed meat as group 1 carcinogens (from https://www.who.int/westernpacific/news/q-a-detail/q-a-on-the-carcinogenicity-of-the-consumption-of-red-meat-and-processed-meat https://www.who.int/westernpacific/news/q-a-detail/q-a-on-th...): What do you consider as processed meat? Processed meat refers to meat that has been transformed through salting, curing, fermentation, smoking, or other processes to enhance flavour or improve preservation. Most processed meats contain pork or beef, but processed meats may also contain other red meats, poultry, offal, or meat by-products such as blood. Examples of processed meat include hot dogs (frankfurters), ham, sausages, corned beef, and biltong or beef jerky as well as canned meat and meat-based preparations and sauces.