The evidence linking nitrates and nitrites to cancer

Iff diagnosed early enough.

While I agree that the interesting statistic is "the individual chance of getting colorectal cancer given that one eats meats cured with nitrites and nitrates", I don't think I'd accept the risk to give up a piece of my colon for the joy of eating ham. Especially if this joy can be enjoyed without having to run the risk (see the bit about Parma ham in the article).

Btw, 5% risk is a gigantic chance. 5%! One in twenty! Where does that number come from? Can you link to its source please?

Edit: let me stress this again; it's not cured meats that increase the chance of colorectal cancer. It's meats cured with nitrates. You don't need to make a choice between a healthy colon and an enjoyable diet.

But in fact, it only cuts life expectancy by about 6 months. To meaningfully cut years off your life, you have to increase your mortality rate by hundreds of percent. E.g. smoking about triples all cause mortality.

Going the other way, this is the real challenge with life extension. To increase life expectancy by a decade would require lowering mortality rates by more than an order of magnitude.

Alternatively, I hope we might make a lucky discovery around gut flora. If bacteria in your digestive tract are digesting compounds in the cured meat & creating carcinogens, perhaps cultivating a different gut flora (e.g. through a predominantly plant-based diet) would be protective.

Yet a third option, from Wikipedia: Endogenous nitrosamine formation can be inhibited by ascorbic acid. In the case of formation of carcinogenic nitrosamines in the stomach from dietary nitrite (used as processed meat preservative), ascorbic acid markedly decreases nitrosamine formation in the absence of fat in the meal; but when 10% fat is present, this reverses the effect such that ascorbic acid then markedly increases nitrosamine formation.

So perhaps we will one day determine that a plate of bacon is unhealthy, while two slices of bacon (18g, 7g fat) plus an orange (150g, 0g fat, 50mg ascorbic acid) is actually perfectly healthy.

How much does my cancer risk increase from alcohol?

" After all, nitrate is naturally present in many green vegetables, including celery and spinach, something that bacon manufacturers often jubilantly point out. As one British bacon-maker told me, “There’s nitrate in lettuce and no one is telling us not to eat that!”

But something different happens when nitrates are used in meat processing. When nitrates interact with certain components in red meat (haem iron, amines and amides), they form N-nitroso compounds, which cause cancer. The best known of these compounds is nitrosamine. "

I remember reading a Cochrane Review meta-analysis confirming a link between processed meat consumption and recto-colon cancer, from memory this probably more than 10 years ago. None of this is new information.

I am all for reducing meat consumption but these 'informational' articles from the guardian and often even the bbc and nyt should be banned as low-value adding submissions.

Unless there are reporting about a recent major world event these sites have (in my opinion) no place in HN.

If you're eating bacon and it tastes like bacon, it's cured.

The answer appears to be: to some extent, but there are limits. And I don't think that's new information. People do things all the time that involve some risk to others. They're more careful about risks to themselves and their families, but there are still limits.

Anyone who smokes cigarettes or sometimes drives under the influence (massive numbers of people) already demonstrated that they're willing to inflict much higher degrees of risk on themselves and others than being lax on covid protocols would entail.

So less colon cancer, more stomach cancer.

edit: ahh the 42% stat was from 1965, not 1999 like the rest of the information.