The risk of nitrites and nitrates in bacon

You also believe yourself to be sensitive to MSG, but the common thread between the foods that are causing you symptoms might not be a pair of poorly-observed sensitivities, but rather that the foods that trigger you tend to be very salty.

So you are saying that even if I got my own raw pork belly from the butcher and learned how to cure it properly with salt, its look and taste would still be inferior to the delicious blocks of bacon I get at any chain grocery store?

(1) You can look at that price tag and see why it's unlikely to be your go-to bacon,

(2) Last I checked, Benton's used a nitrate cure, and

(3) Seriously, intensely smoked food (Benton's bacon qualifies) is probably going to be more carcinogenic from the smoking compounds than from the cure. Unlike nitrate->N-nitrosamine, we're pretty clear on how smoked food causes gastric cancer.

There is an ongoing debate over what actually causes the observed cancer increase from eating (some) meats, and which meats it applies to. Some studies suggest the issue is red meat in general, not cured meats; others focus on a more vague "processed meat" category. (This is made even more confusing by the US habit of selling cured meats labelled as "uncured", which was touched on in the article.)

We do know that nitrites can turn into cancer causing chemicals, but we also know that they do so in low quantities, and that a lot of things in our diet contain nitrites. The "cured-labelled-as-uncured" American bacon gets its nitrites from celery, which contains a lot, yet celery doesn't seem to be causing a lot of cancer. There are some vague theories about how "nitrites in plants are special!", but so far, every attempt to study that has shown the reverse as far as I'm aware.

So in my view, the situation is confusing, but there is certainly evidence that bacon causes cancer. What I don't really buy is the idea that it's obviously the nitrites. It's great that parma hams are made without them, but there's no study (nor is there likely to ever be a study) that says "good news, eating parma hams has 0% impact on your risk of cancer". Especially since they probably do give you cancer, if all the studies showing links to red meat are borne out.

But eh. Maybe it does lower your risk. :) But I think if I was worried about it, I'd skip all bacon, given how nonexistent the evidence is to suggest nitrite-free bacon is actually healthy.

You're telling us all this without mentioning what kind of exercise regiment you're on?

Please, speak for yourself. Some of us have enough trouble find a variety of food to eat without such restrictions. It is actually insulting to be told that radically changing my diet as an unintentional lifelong picky eater is some trivial exercise.

Furthermore it is arrogant to judge value so certainly on behalf of strangers. Put frankly, who are you to tell me what I do and don't like?

At the risk of belaboring the obvious, you may buy yourself some years with virtuous living, but you are still going to die. It's worth considering whether you want to give up all your small temporal pleasures.

I don't doubt his good intentions and I think he attempts to be balanced and use science to back his arguments. But he clearly starts from the position that meat is bad as I think perhaps you do. And perhaps it is. But I would prefer to see that established without prejudice.

If you have an ethical problem with eating meat then don't eat it. But I get a little tired of people proselytising as a result of becoming born again vegans.

As for curing meat. As you say meat can be dangerous to consumer due to contamination. I would rather a slightly elevated risk of cancer from moderate use of nitrate cured meats than near certain death from botulism or some other nasty. I really would like to see a safer alternative become commercially available but I don't want to be second guessing the microbial safety of my cold cuts. I rarely eat bacon but cold cured meats with salad are a relatively important part of my diet as cooking in our kitchen heats the house too much during the warmer months.

I think the big problem with meat, as with the sugar epidemic, is overconsumption. If every meat eater ate meat in moderation as part of a balanced diet there would be far less environmental impact and animal cruelty than creating a small number of vegan converts. Red meat consumption has certainly dropped in Australia though chicken has offset some of that.

So instead of 1 in 170, not eating nitrates makes it 1 in 200.

Understanding the risks is important, but you literally can't live your life avoiding everything that could cause harm to you. It's about picking your battles.

In this article, it's the nitrates, not the bacon itself. Next time I go to Costco I'll take a look and see if there are options with no or fewer nitrates.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672390/

> Analysis of the mid-Victorian period in the U.K. reveals that life expectancy at age 5 was as good or better than exists today, and the incidence of degenerative disease was 10% of ours. Their levels of physical activity and hence calorific intakes were approximately twice ours. They had relatively little access to alcohol and tobacco; and due to their correspondingly high intake of fruits, whole grains, oily fish and vegetables, they consumed levels of micro- and phytonutrients at approximately ten times the levels considered normal today.

That infant mortality was sky-high prior to the 20th century is pretty well known - I can't think of a good, detailed source for that off the top of my head. But what I can tell you, on the subject of longevity in general, is to do the following:

- Look back through the genealogical record, for you personally. "People old enough to have kids" is a good sort-of proxy for life expectancy minus infant mortality. I personally found that my ancestors regularly lived into their 70s and 80s. Very few of my ancestors died younger than 70, going back to the 1600s.

- Another good example is to look at history. Pick up Livy, for example, or someone along those lines, and see how often someone dies of non-violent causes before they've entered old age. It's pretty uncommon. When it did happen, it was usually because of a horrific plague that killed people left and right.

Basically, historically, people generally (we're talking about a huge expanse of time and different cultures here) lived pretty healthy lives. They were much more active than we were, ate fewer processed foods, and often ate very healthy foods. People didn't smoke and didn't eat much sugar. There also wasn't a lot of industry spewing carcinogens and endocrine distributors everywhere. If you lived in a peaceful area and time, in relatively sanitary condition, your odds were very good that you'd live long into old age. Even if you lived in a nasty city (and I'd call Victorian England pretty nasty) your odds weren't bad. Where things fell apart was in war and plague. And as discussed in the paper above, when people did die in old age, they tended to pretty quickly of infection-related causes.

Life expectancy has probably risen and fallen over time, depending on different historical and cultural factors. The popular model of "it's just been getting better and better over time" is not at all correct - it's no coincidence most charts begin in ~1900. The Victorian England paper is a good basis for reflection because it's clear that the medical technology of that time was not dramatically different than that available a few hundred years or even two thousand years earlier, and neither was their diet or lifestyle extraordinary, even if it was good.