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‘Too much’ nitrite-cured meat brings clear risk of cancer, say scientists
- bikamonki 4y agoHow much is too much? 15% says the study, 15% of what?
- hammock 4y agoBe advised that food in the US labeled “nitrate free*” or “uncured” still contains just as much nitrates as the unlabeled stuff. Nitrates are required of US manufacturers BY THE FDA for food safety and just because that’s what those foods are by their nature. The difference is that “uncured” uses fermented celery powder as a natural, indirect source of nitrates to cure the meat. This labeling issue is not necessarily true outside the US. For example, the great hams of Europe like Prosciutto and Jamon Iberico are made with only salt, pork, and time https://cairncrestfarm.com/blog/the-end-of-the-great-nitrate-hoax/ https://cairncrestfarm.com/blog/the-end-of-the-great-nitrate...
- tootie 4y agoThe article is about nitrites not nitrates.
- hammock 4y agoDistinction without a difference. Nitrates breakdown to nitrites with the help of bacteria native in meat itself
- TylerE 4y agoSimilar chemicals can have vastly different biological characteristics, like if one can bind to a certain nueroteceptor (or pass the blood-brain barrier in the first place) or not. Chloride is a basic chemical used by the body. Take away an ion and make it chlorine, and it is fatal in very small quantities.
- xutopia 4y agoAFAIK one gets converted into the other by bacteria and both could react to the strongly acidic environment in the stomach and form nitrosamines which is how we think ingesting them increases chances of cancer.
- saxonww 4y agoYou need to be concerned with both [0]. In short, nitrites and nitrous oxide do the preservative work. Nitrates convert into nitrites and later nitrous oxide over time. But nitrites can also convert into nitrosamine, which is the danger chemical. [0]: https://www.americastestkitchen.com/cooksillustrated/articles/1701-nitrate-versus-nitrite-what-s-the-difference https://www.americastestkitchen.com/cooksillustrated/article...
- dunham 4y agoDo you have any further information on whether the USDA still intends to do something about this?
- xerox13ster 4y agoMy conception of the commonality of the knowledge of the difference between -ate and -ite in chemistry must be warped by taking high level classes at a young age, because this article directly states that it is talking about Nitrite and not nitrates. Nitrates are not nitrites. Nitrates have additional bonds with Oxygen and are therefore more stable than Nitrites. This article is explicitly about nitrites being a clear risk of cancer and only contains a single reference to the world nitrates. The article you listed equates the two substances, but that's not the way the chemistry works here. As the prime example of how different -ites and -ates are: Carbonate is CO3(2-) which is a constituent part of calcium carbonate or Sodium bicarbonate and carbonite is a cloud backup service because chemically, one less bonded oxygen is CO2, carbon dioxide, and that's how it works with carbon because of bonds valence bonds form between electrons, you'll have to forgive me if I'm fuzzy on the finer details, it's been a decade.
- Reason077 4y agoSodium nitrate breaks down into sodium nitrite in cured meat products, so it's the same thing by the time it reaches your bowel.
- xerox13ster 4y agoWell that is horrifying, I am glad I have always made my bresaola nitrate free then.
- djur 4y agoThe fuzziness here is because nitrates and nitrites are both used for meat curing, and the way the nitrate works is by being turned into the nitrite by bacterial action during the cure. Any nitrate that remains in the end product may then be turned into nitrite by gut bacteria. So from a food safety perspective they are really interchangeable. Current regulations in the US allow products made with organic nitrates to be labelled as "uncured" even though the end product would contain nitrites.
- jiveturkey 4y ago
- Reason077 4y ago> "in the US labeled “nitrate free” or “uncured” still contains just as much nitrates as the unlabeled stuff" But not in the EU, where products labelled nitrate-free are NOT permitted to contain nitrate analogs such as celery extract. There are some true nitrate-free bacon products sold in the UK, such as Finnebrogue. They list the only ingredients as "Pork (87%), Water, Salt, Natural Flavouring, Antioxidant: Ascorbic Acid". Not as pink as nitrate-cured bacon once cooked, but tastes pretty great!
- brnt 4y agoMost food sold in the US would not be legal to sell in the EU. Major sticking point in every free trade negotiation.
- ac29 4y ago> Nitrates are required of US manufacturers BY THE FDA for food safety Are you sure? I looked through the "uncured" bacons at a local grocery store online and while most of them have nitrates from celery powder, one of them is just "pork, sea salt, cane sugar".
- hammock 4y agoPer the US Constitution, FDA regulates interstate commerce so if the meat never crosses a state line it is possible
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- kgbcia 4y ago:( ruined hotdogs and nuggets for me
- gareth_untether 4y agoEven knowing the risk, I’m amazed at how many it hasn’t stopped. Mind you, millions of people still smoke.
- sokoloff 4y agoYour last line made me think: “I wonder if it’s actually over a billion?” It is. Around 1.1 billion.
- djur 4y agoNuggets aren't cured meat.
- zrail 4y agoYawn. Wake me up when there's a human population study.
- isthisthingon99 4y agoI'm not a pro. What are the ramifications on stuff I get in the grocery store? What is subject to nitrates?
- xeromal 4y agoDried and cured meats. Sausages. Beef jerkies.
- rsj_hn 4y agoYou can get all of these without nitrates. I am munching on grass-fed nitrate-free beef jerky sticks right now. https://www.amazon.com/Whole30-Approved-Protein-Calories-Original/dp/B07D3NS8NW https://www.amazon.com/Whole30-Approved-Protein-Calories-Ori...
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- kube-system 4y agodoesn't it just have nitrates from the celery?
- rsj_hn 4y agoThe celery juice is added after cooking and the jerky is eaten cold. But yes, the celery juice will have nitrates -- the human body will naturally produce nitrites anyway -- the concerns are about heating the nitrites -- e.g. frying bacon.
- krisoft 4y agoIt says there that it contains "celery juice". "Celery has a very high concentration of natural nitrate, and treating celery juice with a bacterial culture produces nitrite. The concentrated juice can then be used to produce “no nitrite added” processed meat." https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/food/celery-juice-viable-alternative-nitrites-cured-meats https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/food/celery-juice-viable-a...
- luxuryballs 4y agoModern life is starting to consistently be a real drag on almost every front. It’s straight up illegal to sell something as basic as all natural meat in the US: https://fee.org/articles/amish-farmer-faces-fines-prison-time-for-refusing-to-comply-with-usda-regulations/amp https://fee.org/articles/amish-farmer-faces-fines-prison-tim...
- kayodelycaon 4y agoHe was selling across state lines. He's in Pennsylvania; the person who died from his contaminated dairy products was in Florida. That's why the federal government got involved. Interstate commerce is regulated. You can buy raw milk in many states, but you can't ship it to another state. I'm perfectly okay with all sales between states being regulated. Otherwise things could get really nasty, really fast. You only have to look at the history of food and medicine regulation to know why. Source: https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2016/07/inspection-of-millers-organic-farm-is-july-11-raw-milk-at-issue/ https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2016/07/inspection-of-millers...
- Jochim 4y agoYour Amish farmer killed someone with his natural milk: > It all started in 2016, when two listeriosis illnesses that occured in 2014 were traced back to raw milk sold by Miller’s Organic Farm. Both infected people had to be hospitalized, and one tragically died from the illness. These requirements exist to reduce the likelihood of people dying from the food they consume. We do not have the same patterns of consumption as "the good old days" making some types of untreated produce much more dangerous. We also have greater expectations regarding how many people we expect to die from food related illness.
- luxuryballs 4y agoHardly the point. You should be allowed to take risks. Also did he really kill the person with milk? This makes it sound intentional, I highly doubt it.
- drekk 4y ago
- xutopia 4y agoI just made my first cured and dried sausage without the use of pink salt. For anyone fan of charcuterie I recommend trying it out. The results are actually spectacular and my friends and I enjoy better charcuterie with only natural ingredients that an old French farmer would have used on their farm.
- ethanzh 4y agoDo you have any pointers or a guide you followed? I’d be interested in trying this
- xutopia 4y agoI am in a French Facebook group called "La Confrerie De La Charcuterie Maison Officiel". Though it is mostly French folks and I can speak the language but Facebook does a decent job translating. I also used the information on https://www.leblogsaucisson.fr https://www.leblogsaucisson.fr which can also be really easy to translate. The best recipe I did so far was this one: https://www.leblogsaucisson.fr/saucisson-fermier/ https://www.leblogsaucisson.fr/saucisson-fermier/ where I used two different casings (sheep and pork). The sheep one dried really quickly and the pork one is still drying. In a nutshell... it's a lot like making sausages you'd cook to eat except the salt content is increased and you may want to inoculate the casing with some Mold-600(p. nalgiovense) like I do. The rest is about setting up the right environment for the sausages to cure and dry. I use an Inkbird controller (ITC-608T 1800W) in a small wine fridge where I have a humidifier (a small fan on top of a bowl of water I fill from time to time), a dehumidifier (connected to the inkbird) and the thermometer circuit connected directly to the fridge and through the inkbird. It keeps the fridge at around 13C(55F) and 75-80% relative humidity with the settings I use and it does some really amazing results. One thing to note is that all equipment you connect has to have automatic on when power comes back on as the controller just turns the wall plug on and off.
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- nightski 4y agoI feel like this is a pretty interesting analysis [1]. I eat cured meat and even make my own pastrami all the time at home. Not really worried about this at all, but I keep my eye on new data. [1] https://genuineideas.com/ArticlesIndex/nitritesafetylevels.html https://genuineideas.com/ArticlesIndex/nitritesafetylevels.h...
- gregwebs 4y agoGuess which has more nitrites: a hot dog or a single arugula leaf? The scientists raising the alarm about these correlations can’t explain why eating nitrites would cause such harms. There may be something else that is more causul that this is a correlation to such as eating processed food in general
- thelastgallon 4y agoArugula has nitrate, meat is cured by nitrite. Nitrate is less toxic than nitrite and is used as a food source by live plants. Ecotoxicology of nitrite and nitrate: Nitrite levels above 0.75 ppm in water can cause stress in fish and greater than 5 ppm can be toxic. Nitrate levels from 0 – 40 ppm are generally safe for fish. Anything greater than 80 can be toxic. [1] https://www.lenntech.com/hazardous-substances/nitrate-and-nitrite.htm https://www.lenntech.com/hazardous-substances/nitrate-and-ni...
- incrudible 4y agoNitrates are converted into nitrites in the body. Either way, it is not a simple picture. This study is one more data point in a basket of conflicting data [1]. The risk increase may well exist with spinach or arugula, but who wants to eat substantial amounts of that? Certainly not lab mice. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6147587/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6147587/
- iancmceachern 4y agoI'm going to eat it (sparingly, as usual) anyway.
- bentt 4y agoIt won't be too long before it will be commonly understood that eating anything that kills bacteria is bad for people. Our guts contain a diverse and fragile ecosystem of bacteria, fungus, and viruses which can be disrupted by eating things that are poisonous to them. Why does this matter? Because those things control our immune system. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3337124/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3337124/ "Understanding the interaction of gut microbes with the host immune system is a timely and important health topic as the rate of many diseases such as numerous immune disorders are rising at an alarmingly high speed and may result from dysbiosis of commensals."
- hammock 4y agoNot everything. Many traditional preservation methods with salt, lime etc seem to be fine. I’d love to get rid of sodium benzoate, potassium sorbate, sulfur dioxide, BHT, TBHQ, etc though
- bentt 4y ago“seem to be” excess salt is implicated in a number of conditions. but in principle you are right that we have more affinity to natural antibiotics than new synthetic ones.