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Stop Adding Cancer-Causing Chemicals To Bacon, Experts Tell Meat Industry (theguardian.com)
The reputation of the meat industry will sink to that of big tobacco unless it removes cancer-causing chemicals from processed products such as bacon and ham, a coalition of experts and politicians in UK warn this week. From a report: Led by Professor Chris Elliott, the food scientist who ran the UK government's investigation into the horse-meat scandal, and Dr Aseem Malhotra, a cardiologist, the coalition claims there is a "consensus of scientific opinion" that the nitrites used to cure meats produce carcinogens called nitrosamines when ingested. 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.
"Government action to remove nitrites from processed meats should not be far away," Malhotra said. "Nor can a day of reckoning for those who dispute the incontrovertible facts. The meat industry must act fast, act now -- or be condemned to a similar reputational blow to that dealt to tobacco." [...] In a statement issued today, the coalition warns "that not enough is being done to raise awareness of nitrites in our processed meat and their health risks, in stark contrast to warnings regularly issued regarding sugar and fattening foods."
"Government action to remove nitrites from processed meats should not be far away," Malhotra said. "Nor can a day of reckoning for those who dispute the incontrovertible facts. The meat industry must act fast, act now -- or be condemned to a similar reputational blow to that dealt to tobacco." [...] In a statement issued today, the coalition warns "that not enough is being done to raise awareness of nitrites in our processed meat and their health risks, in stark contrast to warnings regularly issued regarding sugar and fattening foods."
Not sure if this is breaking news.
Sugar is the most carcinogenic ingredient in cured bacon. Some butchers will have sugarless bacon. Cancer from a physicist's perspective: a new theory of cancer
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
IS there any alternative to nitrates/ites? My understanding is the alternative to nitrates is botulism.
Either that or lying about nitrate content. I've NEVER seen "nitrate free" meat that wasn't lying with fine print: "..except that which naturally occurs in celery powder" is the same thing as "contains no salt, except that which naturally occurs in seawater."
I'm a bit surprised this study didn't blow up social media when it came out. I mean, bacon, cats, and the Kardashians are 90% of the interwebs.
There's no real evidence that nitrate cause cancer, if anything it's useful to prevent foodborn illness like botulism.
Most studies that link nitrate to cancer have been disproved by other studies.
This isn't a clear open and shut case like cigarettes were.
To me, this is like people trying to convince us that GMOs are bad when there's hundreds of studies that prove they aren't but a handful that says "well maybe it could cause cancer in a very specific and unrealistic scenario on mice and human cells samples in a petri dish that does not have the body's defense system."
Just as bad as the anti-vaccines twats.
Because nitrites are a natural component of certain vegetables - mainly celery extract. If you ban nitrites, you ban celery and most green vegetables. If you ban artificial nitrites, processed meat packagers will simply use celery extract as a preservative. That's what the "nitrite-free bacon" products do - if you read their list of ingredients, you'll find celery extract listed prominently. Because the natural nitrites in it are used to preserve the cured meat in lieu of artificially produced nitrites. The only difference is the former can be labeled "celery extract" while the latter must be labeled as "nitrties."
At some point you have to accept that lots of naturally-occurring substances can kill you. And stop going on witch hunts against things just because they have a scary name that you don't recognize even though you've been eating, breathing, or rolling around in it all your life.
The only way I can see this working is like how we recommend how much fish you should eat because of the different amounts of mercury they contain. Come up with a list of the maximum amount of a food you should eat in a week due to the nitrites they contain. Bacon, hot dogs, celery, cabbage, carrots, spinach, beets, etc. And publish those as health advisories.
why nitrates in vegetables aren't really a problem
TL;DR; cooking a high protein food at high heat is what makes them cancerous.
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Use the FDA approved nitrite salts for curing and there are strict limits on how much can be added.
Expect more nitrites when celery juice or cherry powder are used. Both are natural plant based nitrite sources. And the amounts added are calculated based on the weakest celery juice or cherry powder...
what made me give up processed meats was finding out how it was we figured out nitrates caused cancer: a bunch of cows were being fed expired herring and getting liver cancer at abnormally high rates. Now, to be fair those cows ate a _lot_ more nitrates than what's expected in a day, but then again so do a lot of Americans...
To be fair I don't care much for meat (I've got a weak sense of taste and mostly pick up on texture in foods so meat's kinda bleah to me).
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Governments are not going ban nitrites from preserved meats for good reason. They are there to inhibit bacterial growth, especially Clostridium Botulinum. A better solution is simply to make sure only the necessary amount it nitrite is present and add an antioxidant like ascorbic acid to reduce the production of Nitrosamines in the stomach, which the USDA is pursuing. And of course to only consume small amounts of preserved meats. The WHO has put out advice which has been widely reported and everybody knows about it.
Simply removing nitrates as the professors claim they want, would be replacing a tiny increase in the risk of colon cancer when you are 60 with a large risk of dying today from Botulism every time you eat bacon, which would be insane. The professors know this and are lying. Their real agenda is just to impose a blanket ban on the manufacture of all bacon, ham, pastrami, salami etc.
I wish more companies sold frozen bacon, it freezes really well and there's no need to add nitrates.
Website Just Down For Me? Find out
"Big tobacco" refers to a large cartel that pushed a dangerous carcinogenic product knowing it was super-addictive and cultivating that all while lying about it and putting out a campaign of disinformation for decades.
You're a coward hiding from a very common phrase, for whatever purpose of distracting bullshit you exist for these days Kohath. "Big Tobacco" exists, so dry your little eyes about it being referenced, snowflake.
I don't normally reply to AC trolls, but it's worth mentioning that beef and lamb "bacon" exist for cultures that don't like pork. They are delicious.
The words "big tobacco" came from the newspaper article, not from the scientists quoted in the article.
The use of those words do not make thier words less valid.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
There is also turkey bacon, which I actually prefer since it's leaner.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
WHAT?? Notorious? For using a casing that's been used ever since sausage was invented? This is the kind of scare mongering that makes people ignore anything else attached.
If bacon is outlawed, only Islamist terrorists will have bacon.
That would be fine if the cancer risk of bacon was anywhere near as bad as tobacco. Media sensationalism tried to push that narrative for clicks, namely by equating the certainty of nitrate cured meats being a carcinogen with tobacco's potency as a carcinogen, and a bunch of tards (especially militant vegans) still think that is the case, even though the WHO long since clarified their position (and stated that they don't think it needs the same response that tobacco needs.)
Nitrates in meat greatly reduce the time needed to cure (hence reducing the cost by a lot), make them taste better than curing with just salt, and make them more red in appearance (cosmetic only, but people prefer that color as opposed to the greyish color that comes from salt curing.)
IMO if anybody needs any punishment over this, it should be the stupid organic variations that claim to be nitrate free because they use "natural organic" celery juice to cure them, even though celery juice is very high in nitrates (duh) and doesn't make any difference, at all, vs mineral nitrates like potassium nitrate or sodium nitrate (and yes, these are actually mined, just like halite, so they're every bit as "natural".)
Hell, punish the whole organic movement while you're at it, it's so full of the cow shit it's made of (hence the rate of food poisoning is 10 times higher for organic produce, with no nutritional or taste benefit at all, not to mention insanely wasteful of natural resources and bad on the environment.)
Yes, God forbid *people decide for themselves*.
Second /. Article today based on an entirely flawed premise (the one claiming that concer crops are somehow new or experimental being the other one).
Back when the UNs IARC labelled processed meats as carcinogenic the good Dr Carroll (professor at IU Medical School) pointed out that the actual risk of eating significantly more bacon than you used to is rather small. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
I'm not disparaging turkey bacon, but the reason I mentioned beef and lamb is because the cut of meat used is equivalent and can be treated almost identically.
Nitrates and nitrites have been used to cure meats since antiquity. Where did the nitrates and nitrites come from? Natural sources. Yes, that's right. It occurs in deposits in the ground and can be easily refined from nitrate-rich organic materials using technology thousands of years old.
Is there an alternative to curing the meat with nitrites? Because if there isn't, this is just an academic conversation. We're not going to ban cured meats, and everyone already knows meat causes cancer. No one cares. Pigs are fucking delicious. Cows are fucking delicious. We've already decided it's worth it.
They're saying 6,600 cases a year in the UK is high, except even in today's "post bust" era when everyone and dog openly says how bad tobacco is, when there's been HUGE strides to fix things and get folks off of it?
https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics/statistics-by-cancer-type/lung-cancer
Still over 46,000 new cases of lung cancer in the UK alone in 2015, per localized research. When combined with population growth they expect over 62,000 incidents by 2035.
Sure not all of that lung cancer is from smoking, especially when the sharp drop-off in recent decades has crashed out to a very long, slow tail now, but the risk from nitrates in meats seems ridiculously low. It's in the range of 10 per 100k at the quoted 6,600 cases. That's really rather low. It is groups in the 4th highest category of deaths in the UK for a very narrow age range: 50-64 year olds.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/health-profile-for-england/chapter-2-major-causes-of-death-and-how-they-have-changed
Overall this just seems like a lot of noise and motion for little reason besides rattling a tin can in the news.
- WolfWings, too lazy to login to /. even when I provide citations.
Gimme nitrites over botulism any day. What about nitrates? can they be used w/o cancer?
...
I smoke. As Andrew Dice Clay pointed out, if second hand smoke is worse than "first hand" smoke, I made the right choice then didn't I?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Celery, arugular (aka rocket) and a number of other plants have far higher amounts of nitrite than bacon. If nitrites caused cancer, then celery should be banned before bacon. The fact that celery hasn't been associated with cancer completely undermines the hypothesis that nitrites in bacon cause cancer.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Nitrites don't cause cancer, but nitrosamines do. One gets converted into the other but it depends on how you prepare your breakfast. You should be an informed breakfast preparer.
Salty sentiment. I hope that was Himalayan Rock Salt.
I've never heard anyone say nitrates make meat taste better. If that were true why can't you find it next to MSG in the spice aisle?
Stay the course, meat industry. Stay the course.
#DeleteChrome
Hot dogs use it as a preservative but it's allowed because adding vitamin C to the mix prevents the chemical reaction from happening, in theory and in a controlled lab environment, but more recent studies have shown that the human stomach does still form the carcinogen no matter how much vitamin C is added.
In fact, in this case, it certainly *is* socialistic/totalitarian to *tell people what they can and cannot eat*, particularly when the effects are highly dubious.
Maybe it does and maybe it doesn't. Hysterical news media reporting (a.k.a. trolling) about a subject gives people a good reason to doubt any particular message regarding that subject.
If n scientists were quoted, why shouldn’t we wonder if 2n other scientists wouldn’t go along with the reporter's agenda? What would we be reading if the reporter intended to be factual? Something much different? Longer, more scientific quotes that mention uncertainties?
You do realize that real intestines are significantly more expensive to obtain and fill than artificial casings, and only premium sausage products are packaged in them? (The same goes for condoms, BTW).
I don't really understand people who get squeamish about eating any animal organ other than muscle tissue. What makes intestines any more disgusting than muscles?
So that puts Nitrates on the same list ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...) as Vapors from frying
Hot beverages
Earl Grey Tea (Bergapten)
Coffee (Acrylamide)
Red Meat (Which already includes bacon)
Charred Meat (2-Amino-3-methylimidazo[4,5-f]quinoline)
All cooked and smoked meat (N-Nitrosodimethylamine)
and last but not least
Shift work that disrupts the circadian rhythm
Yeah all we need now is wheat and beans and Everything in British and American breakfasts will be cancerous...
On a more serious note:
I would like to reach across all the demographics of Slashdot commenters and try to get a thread going here telling the Admins that we are more critical thinkers than most and really don't appreciate this kind of clickbait alarmist fad science being posted here.
Everyone here knows that applying the linear no threshold model to anything that causes genetic damage is bull shit
You want a statistic bigger than 6600 cases of bowel cancer here's a statistic for you
In the United States alone 10,000 people die a year due to stress and hysteria over Radiation and Nuclear Energy ( https://www.nap.edu/catalog/12... )
Now Imagine how many cases of stomach and bowel cancer are caused by undereducated over read people getting their stomach in knots and their panties in a twist over bullshit overstated cancer headlines.
Right, Left, Others let's all say as one "Shut the fuck up!"
"What about making bacon in the microwave?"
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
Yeah, I went there. ;)
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
So? I wouldn't eat either without cooking it.
I thought the purpose of organic produce is that it won't harm the environment like mass produce requires. Doesn't mass produce require synthesized fertilizers and pesticides to keep the costs as cheap as possible?
The analogy with "Big Tobacco" is apt. In both instances people are consuming something that is obvious bad for them, and then blaming their idiotic behavior on corporations because "they made me do it".
I remember hearing about nitrites+heat generating carcinogens 40 years ago. Nobody in their right mind believed that bacon was good for them.
Why do "nitrate free" products taste worse? I've been sampling both uncured (and apparently without even celery extract) and "nitrate free" (celery juice cured) breakfast meats and find both of them equally worse tasting than nitrate cured products.
Yuck. Half the point of cooking up a 2 lb package of extra-thick bacon every so often is for filtering and saving the rendered fat for other cooking purposes.
Are the carcinogens the things that make bacon taste good but smell really bad while being cooked?
Or is that simply a response I've developed from wanting to sleep while others were awake making noise while cooking bacon?
But that's what makes it taste good.
I'm not surprised the UK would begin attacking pork products. It was only a matter of time.
Well this as insightful shows how incredibly partisan and riht wing idiocy dominated this site has become. This whole "UK is islamic" is a weird fantasy of some segments of the American right wing, and seems poplar on Fox.
It is simply, utterly flat-out false.
Naturally I will be modded down for pointing this out.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
In fact, in this case, it certainly *is* socialistic/totalitarian to *tell* people what they can and cannot eat*, particularly when the effects are highly dubious.
Now it's socialist for people to hear things that they might not like? Christ what a bunch of snowflakes. No one is forcing anyone to do anything here. All that's happening is some dude (with evidence) has written an open letter to an industry roup teling them he thinks they're causing trouble for themselves.
If you think private individuals writing open letters to trade organisations is socialist then you have a massively overdeveloped sense of persecution.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
No, the purpose of organic produce is to sell you the myth it's better for the environment at 3x the price.
Donald Trump, on a crusade to make Nixon look respectable
Lambskin condoms are more expensive in large part because they're considered a superior product (in terms of sensitivity, so long as you don't care about STI transmission). They're sold in lower volume due to the higher price (and the fact they're slimy/clammy), so there's less economy of scale to keep price down.
Intestines are normally discarded (or more likely, turned into grist for feedlots), as the market for (humans) eating intestines is way smaller than the amount produced by the meat industry. I could see synthetic casings being cheaper, but the intestines are going to be cheap to buy; if anything, cleaning them would be the vast majority of the cost of using them. I imagine the premium sausages use natural casings for reasons of tradition, which allows them to charge a higher price to make up for it.
I suspect there's some instinctive disgust for organ meats, that can be suppressed via exposure. Thus, people not raised eating it tend to resist eating it. I know other animals are a-ok eating organs, so I'm unsure why humans would be.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Not sure if you're going for "flamebait" or "idiot" mod. points, but of all Western European and North American countries, England (but not the UK) is probably the worst example of a (potential) Islamic country, since it's the only one where Christianity is the state religion and the ruling head of state (monarch in the case of the England) is also the head of the church. Sometimes overlooked is the fact that the CofE is also head of the Anglican church worldwide, rather like the Pope for the Catholics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Contrast this to France, where the (republication) state expressly forbids alignment of state with religion, or even expressions / symbols of faith in public life, (a ban frequently flouted by all side, admittedly). Note that the % people declared practising Islam in both countries is a very scary.....5% In the USA of course, the danger is even more acute ;)
France : 51% Christians, 5.6% Islam
England : 59% Christians, 5% Islam
USA: 74% Christians, 0.8% Islam
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Intestine-based casings are way LESS disgusting to me because you can actually chew them...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Thats true, but a core dilemma is that traditional curing is a drying process. Where the alternative is salt coating and air drying. Possibly less salt and heating to dry.
While a lot of meat contains nitrates for preservation or for food colouring.
There is a big difference between a cured ham thats dry by process, and a mixed dough of raw meat thats needs a lot of preservatives to be stored for 1-3 weeks of shelf life from production. There is a even bigger difference between half baked, baked and raw meat dishes intended for long term commercial storage of weeks: Waiting for the customers to arrive at the shelfs and nab em.
Its basically a very big dilemma where a lot of food technology and logistics are based around traditional methods intended for completely different types of meat, but modern production chain involves raw meats being stored using similar ingredients to preserve it. On top of that another big issue is that the taste of food degrades as its stored, meaning each step away from raw food will degrade the taste merely by storage. So once you go from smoke dried ham to a half finished dish that contains bacon, merely storing it to sell it reduces taste by such a amount that you can't really use similar recipes to the actual dish.
So at some point into the cycle of preserved half cooked food, you need to drown the food in sugar/salt/preservatives/flavor enrichen to compete with its core recipe. Its basically the reason why Frozen Pizza has limited taste, since it needs to be half cooked to be distributed.
I mean, to illustrate a point we should just quote wikipedia:
>Curing is any of various food preservation and flavoring processes of foods such as meat, fish and vegetables, by the addition of combinations of salt, nitrates, nitrites,[1] or sugar, with the aim of drawing moisture out of the food by the process of osmosis.
>Many curing processes also involve smoking, spicing, or cooking. Dehydration was the earliest form of food curing.[2]
Its essentially a process to create dry food, due there existing no proper form of cold storage before modern times. And that is very different from a luxury product like ham being coated and minced into a salt mixture with nitrate because people do not cook and slice ham due family size constraints.
That would be fine if the cancer risk of bacon was anywhere near as bad as tobacco.
More people eat bacon than smoke tobacco... maybe.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
You mean Birmingham isn't a no-go city? Pshaw! Humbug! I find that hard to believe! Fox News said it, so it must be true.
Uncured, by law (in the US), is cured meat with a natural source of nitrate or nitrite. Food producers are required to call it "uncured" even if they believe it's misleading and inaccurate.
You do realize ‘The Jungle’ was written with the intent of showing how dangerous the work conditions were for the workers, and showing the foid safety horror show was ancillary to that goal? The author was pretty upset that his main point was ignored (suffering workers) from what I’ve read about it.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
There are so many idiots on Slashdot these days ... It's like you are part of some kind of #MeToo movement, but for idiots instead of woman who have been assaulted.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Basically all food is trying to kill you in some way. Mainly because we eat other lifeforms who themselves don't want to be eaten.
We find toxins in nearly every food we eat, because nearly every animal, fungus and plant creates such toxins as a safety measure from being eaten. But those who eat these lifeforms have built in a tolerance to such toxins (Not I said a tolerance not an immunity) These toxins are still bad for us, but we can deal with small amounts, as the nutrition of eating it exceed the cost of having the toxins.
Now with inorganic (including salt curing) methods of preservation. We are trying to kill of bacteria whose main goal is to turn the food into a puddle of slime, that will have little to no health benefit. As well as other bacteria that we as humans are not well evolved into digesting. Preservation of food, is making food more toxic, because we want to kill of harmful organisms that is in it. But we tend to do it at levels that will not outright hurt us.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I think it may largely have to do with what type of food you are use too. This is quite literally a matter of taste. However I expect growing up you had nitrate added breakfast meats so that is what you connect to the taste of proper bacon.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
This is why we need to get past nuclear phobias that keep us from using radiation to treat foods to vastly increase their shelf lives SAFELY. The radiation passes through, killing those bad microbes, and leaves no residual radiation. "Science", anyone??
There are a lot of food phobias out there, many are very culturally sensitive. A lot of Asian foods use fermented food which would find disgusting if we knew what was happening. They let the food spoil to a point when kill off the rest.
Even a lot of our foods such as steak the meat hangs until it gets crusty, we shave that off and sell it as fresh steak.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I seem to remember reading that. I know it keeps the meat from turning grey. Never mattered to me because I'm pretty color blind, but I think we've got better/safer preservatives if you're just trying to extend shelf life.
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Got a link for that "10 times higher for organic produce"? You made some good points like the celery juice bit, which I think most informed people were aware of, but you're sounding more like an industry shill than an informative contributor and posting AC doesn't help. Blowing off organic farming and even calling for "punishing" it is a bit extreme. It certainly is possible to focus on quality over quantity - ask anyone who grows there own tomatoes. Soil can become deficient in minerals and that transfers to the plants, making them less nutritious. Some people like to know what they're putting in their body. Certain pesticides may be safe at certain levels, but that information's not on the "label".
"insanely wasteful of natural resources and bad on the environment" - ??? Link? Looking more and more like a shill.
Indeed. It's only Birmingham, Bradford and about half of London.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Look at the scary list of natural pesticides found in cabbage - among them both carcinogenic and mutagenic substances.
Media sensationalism tried to push that narrative for clicks
This just reminds me of that What the Health Netflix documentary where at one point the narrator says something along the lines of: "I even read a study somewhere that said eating 2 eggs is as dangerous as smoking a cigarette!" and he then doesn't show or tell any more information on the study.
Then again this same documentary also had some claim (I can't quite remember it, so I guess I'm doing about the same as the documentary man now) about how if you ate carbs and no fat, carbs wouldn't turn into fat in your body????? Someone's a bit confused.
I suspect there's some instinctive disgust for organ meats, that can be suppressed via exposure. Thus, people not raised eating it tend to resist eating it. I know other animals are a-ok eating organs, so I'm unsure why humans would be.
Aren't organs the first to decompose once an animal died? Maybe at some point evolutionary when human ancestors were still primarily scavengers there was evolutionary pressure to stay away from the organs of scavenged animals. Once we moved to hunting if the organs were eaten they were most likely eaten first to avoid spoilage. Interestingly enough, in societies that do "regularly" eat organs (I say "regularly" because a lot of these societies tend to be traditional, agrarian, and poorer so eating meat in rarer than in more developed societies) organs tend to be regarded as prized cuts, with certain organs going to certain people depending on status within the group/community.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
US centric post but i got sick of al lthis creepyness in meat so i started buying a Whole hog or cow from a local farmer, they happily take it to the closest Slaughterhouse/ Meat market for you ((most smaller towns have one)) few days later you have meat for a year, that you know is safe.
What makes intestines any more disgusting than muscles?
Um, the contents?
Peace is easy to achieve, just surrender. Liberty is much harder get/keep.
Bacon without nitrates isn't bacon, it's just pork belly.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
The injury you can get from Staphylococcus and Listeria monocytogenes are more significant to a wider population of people than the small (but measurable) increase in cancer from nitrates.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
People die every year from eating contaminated or unwashed lettuce. Even organic food can be risky.
Best option is to eat nothing at all, or to keep stupid opinions to yourself.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
It is amazing how stupid people are. Not only should it have been obvious before the specific data came in, for the reasons you mention, but it has been years now where the studies are showing that eating "processed meat products" is a major factor in the increased rate of colon cancer in the US.
The neckbeards start wailing about how they'll die without their daily 10lb of bacon, without even considering that the problem has nothing to do with the pig meat, and if these chemicals get removed, bacon will still be made out of pig meat.
It isn't the bacon that is the problem, it is the additives. And they put it in all the processed meat products; lunch meat, hot dogs, bacon, ground beef, everything in the frozen aisle that has meat that isn't a whole cut.
More people eat processed meat than smoke, and for poor people, they'll have a harder time quitting.
For the poor, the choices are between eating processed meat, or not eating meat.
It isn't addictive, but it is a matter of basic freedom for them. They're not going to change their food culture. And there is no good reason why it is currently so harmful.
You're either European, or you live in a really bad neighborhood if that many people around you smoke.
And I'm from a city with a lot of vegetarians.
Don't just wave your hands with the word "toxic" like that, it is inaccurate.
Toxic is relative, not absolute; making something toxic to certain bacteria doesn't make the food "toxic" at all. Is it toxic to humans or not? If not, then it is misleading to use the bare word "toxic" to describe it, you should instead say "toxic to some specific type of creature."
Salt is not toxic to humans. The Japanese eat the most salt of any country, and they also have the longest lifespan.
This is why we need to get past nuclear phobias that keep us from using radiation to treat foods to vastly increase their shelf lives SAFELY. The radiation passes through, killing those bad microbes, and leaves no residual radiation. "Science", anyone??
You have to use a different word, like "electron sterilization," or "x-ray sterilization."
As for your appeal to science, please stop. You clearly don't understand the science, you only understand that people you believe are sciencey said that it is safe. That doesn't mean you understand the science. The radiation doesn't just "pass through," if it did there would be no sterilizing effect. You're not going to explain the science, because people aren't going to understand that it is absorbed by the food, but that absorbing radiation doesn't make something radioactive. Just like, sitting under the lightbulb doesn't cause you to emit light yourself when it is turned off. If the average person thought of the photons coming out of the lightbulb when you say "radiation," then they'd be capable of understanding it. But they don't, so they can't. And the people trying are usually just virtue signaling anyways.
And if you use electron sterilization, there is residual radiation, because the food remains ionized. Now you get to explain to people why you lied to them about the science, and they want to know if they can really trust you. LOL Better is to stop using the word that confuses them in the first place, instead of trying to give them a simple-but-false explanation. People understand that electricity is dangerous to touch, but the electrified object is safe later. So they can understand that electron sterilization is safe. Same for x-rays.
There is nothing wrong with cured meat. The problem is with chemical additives.
Italians have traditional meat curing processes. The resulting meats are expensive, but safe.
I call BS on your reading comprehension.
I smoke. As Andrew Dice Clay pointed out, if second hand smoke is worse than "first hand" smoke, I made the right choice then didn't I?
That just means you're less stupid than whoever is willing to be your friend or family member.
Maybe it does and maybe it doesn't.
No, absolutely not.
Person A says says something.
Person B listens, and then says something different.
Person A said the thing that Person B said:
a) True
b) False
c) Not enough information
You chose C, and you're wrong. Don't be a credulous moron. This is not a hard one.
Comparing nitrates to tobacco is obvious hyperbole. You all need to grow up.
Without added nitrites there is no bacon. It doesn't exist. Nitrites are what make it bacon.
And the additives are exactly what make it safer. Without erythorbic acid it forms a lot more nitrosamines.
No.
All living things did not develop ineffective toxins to prevent being eaten. How could this evolve it it takes 30 years to have an effect long past the breeding cycle of the eaten species? Very few species have developed this, mostly plants.
Your knowledge of biology is highly suspect, as is your knowledge of curing.
Oxygen, the primary purpose of adding nitrites, prevents clostridium botulinium from growing. It doesn't kill it and oxygen isn't toxic. Toxicity is based on not only the material, but the dosage which you are ignoring.
TLDR: food never evolved to develop toxins to kill us. That is not how it works for nearly all species. Salt and dry curing is to take up available water to slow pathogen growth until there's not enough water, not to poison them with toxins.
I'm not talking about home hobbyists. I *am* talking about hot dogs and other industrially manufactured sausages, which comprise the vast majority of the market. I an certain that their high speed machines have an easier time dealing with artificial casings as they spit out sausages by the mile.
The article mentions the UK because the full-English breakfast (containing bacon) is one of the things that makes living on a cold, damp island enjoyable :)
Not only is it not nearly as carcinogenic, it also does not kill people merely for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. What makes cigarettes so heinous is not that it kills smokers, but that it disproportionately kills innocent bystanders.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Except it's far FAR less obvious that bacon is as harmful for you as tobacco.
Nitrites in cured meats are a trade off. The trade off is the avoidance of dying from botulism or some other food borne illness.
Frankly I trust big business far less to kill me in the short term versus chemical additives that have failed to prematurely kill members of my own gene pool.
Even the "official proof" of the harm of nitrites is grossly overblown by the media.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
> The thing is, nothing you said was about food safety.
Sure it is. If you trust big business with uncured meat then you're a moron.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
It isn't that well thought out. What "organic" means is that the production methods follow the rules written by the Soil Association (in the UK ; I assume there is a comparable body in the USA). Nothing less, and nothing more. What "organic" is marketed as varies according to what you are selling. So, if you're selling grains, then you say that the purpose of "organic" is to promote the use of less (or different) fertilizer, but you don't mention that permitted fertilizers include half-rotten pig shit and exclude shit-free chemicals manufactured from thin air and pure water. If you're selling organic lamb, you market it on claims that "organic" means "better tasting and healthier" to distract people from thinking that it means a lamb adolescent being hung up by hooks through it's ankles and then having it's throat cut. Because that might upset the eaters. You may notice that there is no connection between what the term means, and it's advertising insinuation. Did you actually expect anything different.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
That's simply not true. Chicken and turkey are inexpensive and available minimally processed.
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It has to do with US law, not what you're used to.
Reread what he said. It is correct. By law, pork belly bacon cured with nitrites from a natural source must be labeled "uncured". By law, adding the same chemical directly must be labeled "cured" or "nitrites added", and cannot be labeled "uncured" despite being exactly the same chemical.
If it's bacon, it has nitrites (or nitrates which convert to nitrites through a biological process). If it doesn't have any nitrites added, it is not bacon and calling it that is probably violating labeling laws.
Indeed. It's only Birmingham, Bradford and about half of London.
Huh some people aactually believe Fox news.
Tell you what so you don't look like a total idiot how about you tell me which areas of my home town (London) are no-go so I can have a good laugh at your expense.
(A clue, I'm from saafariva so the whole of North London is no go and anyway who would want to? Yo'd 'ave to go to North London innit.)
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I did not, thanks.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
"people are consuming something that is obvious bad for them"
Depends. Lots of producers don't use sodium nitrite.
Bacon was not invented in the past hundred years in America you idiot.
The English had bacon in the Saxon era already.
When you watch that Vikings show on teevee, in that period of time, the food those English kings are eating would include bacon. It would have been spelled bacoun though.
https://www.englishbreakfastso...
Stop letting your neckbeard tell you such stupid things. Nobody is trying to take away your bacon. People who understand public health are not part of an anti-bacon conspiracy. The only reason your neckbeard is telling you to defend cancer is because it hates you, and doesn't even want you to taste real bacon.
Low cost chicken appears not to be processed. For chicken they have in situ chemical processing. That's why it has some absurd percentage of added weight. There is likely a percentage on the package explaining to you that something like 17% of your bird isn't actually a bird, but some processing solution that they injected it with.
Try to buy a natural bird in the same store; it will be in a different aisle. And it will cost 3x as much.
https://www.usda.gov/media/blo...
Just another day in Paradise
"If you need a reporter to be 100% unbiased in their reporting to take a given topic seriously, you need to go back to elementary school. Facts and opinions are different things, both can be in a given statement, and you obviously never figured that out. Further, we don't care what 2n other scientists said, or what the reporter's "agenda" is. We care about what statements the scientists in the article said and whether or not those statements are factual when referring to the results and process of their research. Yes there may be interpretation in the article, and the scientists may even be the ones to give it, but when referring to the actual data and how that data was generated, that is when we care about whether or not the statements are factual. That's the scientific method, and when used properly it cuts through any bias."
Nobody expects "100% unbiased", it's just not going to happen. What I would like to see is fewer pejoratives in headlines that are clearly opinion instead of fact based. We see way too much of that from both the left and right. What I'd like to see is much less click-bait, but I know in this age of eyeball revenue, it's not likely to ever happen again.
Just another day in Paradise
After googling this stuff and hitting 8 websites, this one seems to be the most informative.
https://www.healthline.com/nut...
In summary, eating lots of processed meats is linked to certain cancers (might be related to nitrates/nitrites, might not). Lots of vegetables contain tons of nitrates, but cooking them doesn't produce the bad stuff. The problem is
Quote:
"When nitrites are exposed to high heat, in the presence of amino acids, they can turn into compounds called nitrosamines.
There are many different types of nitrosamines... and most of them are potent carcinogens (26).
They are among the main carcinogens in tobacco smoke, for example.
Because most bacon, hot dogs and processed meat tend to be high in sodium nitrite and they're high protein foods (a source of amino acids), exposing them to high heat creates the perfect conditions for nitrosamine formation (27)."
Nitrites also weren't invented in the last 100 years. Nitrites have been used to cure meat for centuries. It may not have always been the processed form of nitrites used today but nitrites from natural sources.
It also isn't the nitrites/nitrates that are carcinogenic but rather the nitrosamines that are produced when nitrites are heated (above 300 degrees F if I remember correctly).
There is way more nitrite in leafy greens than in cured meat. We just don't usually heat those green to the point that nitrosamines form.
Well this as insightful shows how incredibly partisan and riht wing idiocy dominated this site has become. This whole "UK is islamic" is a weird fantasy of some segments of the American right wing, and seems poplar on Fox.
Interesting that you would jump on an AC comment that said nothing about America, Fox, left or right wings. I'm not arguing the AC's point, only that yours is a large source of the partisan nature you're complaining about.
Just another day in Paradise
Not picking on the parent here, just a general comment. I love how people toss the word "natural" around as if natural ingredients make it all better. There are plenty of toxic natural ingredients.
Just another day in Paradise
we eat other lifeforms who themselves don't want to be eaten.
Fruit is delicious food with seeds inside specifically intended by the plant to be eaten and distribute the seeds (hopefully inside manure). How could you possibly conclude it doesn't want to be eaten?
J
Basically all food is trying to kill you in some way.
Are we saying that plants evolved the production of nitrates to make us die of cancer 50 years after eating it? That doesn't sound like a particularly effective defense.
J
What makes intestines any more disgusting than muscles?
In situ they are filled with shit.
J
...
Did you have any point, other than to give enough details to show you understand the point, but also to show that you're trying to distract from it by placing emphasis on historical dates that are misleading?
Wave your hands some more, but it shows that you do understand, and are trolling. You're splitting hairs not because the detail is relevant, but to make irrelevant details appear to contradict the claims. Pathetic waste of effort.
My point is that nitrites have been used for centuries to cure meat (even bacon/bacoun). It is difficult to find a pre-17th century recipe (best I could find was this site - recipe is about half way down) but I would be surprised if they weren't using saltpeter as part of the recipe. Even "natural" salt from sea water or mining contains nitrites.
Your original post deriding bugnuts for saying bacon wasn't bacon without nitrites seemed to imply that nitrites were only used in the last 100 years or so for curing bacon. Even the link you posted doesn't make reference to whether nitrites (saltpeter) was or wasn't used to cure the bacoun.
Sorry if you still think this is just me trolling you.
> "It isn't the bacon that is the problem, it is the additives."
WTF are you going on about? Is sodium nitrite an additive? I think it is.
> "Nobody is trying to take away your bacon."
You take away additives, you take away bacon. It doesn't exist without additives, specifically nitrite in some form. And additional additives, specifically erythorbic acid, make it safer.
You're a fucking ignorant philistine, whereas, I have a fucking curing chamber in my back room. My pinky understands the science, laws, chemistry, and biology about curing better than your entire body.
Yes, cured meats increase chance of cancer. WHO proved it. They also claim it's highly likely red meat (uncured) also increases chance of cancer.
You have about a 4% chance of getting colon cancer in your life. If you eat 2 lbs of cooked bacon a day for life, that increases to something like a 10% chance. Two fucking pounds of bacon a day, every day. You'll die of heart disease long before cancer claims you if you're eating 2 lbs/day.
Toxic natural ingredients would have been noticed a long time ago. It didn't take long for civilization to learn that seasoning your food with lead acetate was a bad idea.
Yes, but there are plenty of toxins in the things you do eat from natural sources. They just won't kill you unless you reach quantities that are much higher. Water is toxic in large quantities, and people die from drinking too much every year.
Just another day in Paradise
Paracelcus had the right idea on the matter.
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