‘Too much’ nitrite-cured meat brings clear risk of cancer, say scientists | Hacker News Reader

‘Too much’ nitrite-cured meat brings clear risk of cancer, say scientists

theguardian.com

70 pointsadrian_mrd53 comments

Be 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...

The article is about nitrites not nitrates.

Distinction without a difference. Nitrates breakdown to nitrites with the help of bacteria native in meat itself

Similar 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.

AFAIK 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.

You 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/article...

Do you have any further information on whether the USDA still intends to do something about this?

My 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.

Sodium nitrate breaks down into sodium nitrite in cured meat products, so it's the same thing by the time it reaches your bowel.

Well that is horrifying, I am glad I have always made my bresaola nitrate free then.

The 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.

not just allowed, required.

https://nationalaglawcenter.org/to-cure-or-note-to-cure-grou...

> In the 1990s, manufacturers began developing new ways to cure meats with celery or other natural nitrate/nitrite sources. Federal labeling rules require meats processed in this manner to include the terms “Uncured” and the statement “No Nitrate or Nitrite Added” because they do not use synthetic curing agents.

it changed in late 2021 though although i’m not clear by how much

> "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!

Most food sold in the US would not be legal to sell in the EU. Major sticking point in every free trade negotiation.

> 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".

Per the US Constitution, FDA regulates interstate commerce so if the meat never crosses a state line it is possible

Modern 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-tim...

He 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...

Your 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.

Hardly 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.

I'm sure the dead person's family is put at peace by the Amish farmer's intention. He didn't mean to kill him—he just didn't follow food safety procedures that were established for the specific reason of preventing illness and disease.

If you want to take risks make your own raw milk or fresh meat. Once you're selling food you have some liability where not killing your customers is concerned.

> Hardly the point. You should be allowed to take risks.

Sure, but society has largely decided that you shouldn't be allowed to take risks with other people's lives. I'm perfectly happy for you to squirt milk into your mouth straight out of the udder for as long as you like. I'm not happy to allow charlatans to lie about how much healthier and safer it is than pasteurised milk while selling it to people who don't know any better.

> Also did he really kill the person with milk? This makes it sound intentional, I highly doubt it.

I might agree with you if the man had changed anything after finding out that his milk had lead to multiple hospitalisations and a death. Unfortunately I can't as that wasn't the case:

> "They use it as a medicine," Miller said in a 2021 interview. "It’s very healing to the body because it’s raw."

Given the context I find this statement repugnant. Profiting from the sale of food while refusing to follow food safety regulations and actively hampering their enforcement is exactly the kind of sociopathic behaviour that institutions of correction should be dealing with.

Should we ban sushi or raw seafood?

We have very specific regulations regarding the storing and preparation of raw fish. Just like we do for raw milk and other foodstuffs that can kill people. Some might find the "red tape" annoying, but it's why we've all but eliminated, for example, botulism deaths

But you're saying raw milk shouldn't be consumed. Though raw fish is fine?

The sale of untreated seafood is banned most places. The vast majority of seafood will have been processed by freezing it below a specific temperature for at least the required length of time. Sounds a lot like cold pasteurisation to me. Exemptions typically seem to be granted for seafood not susceptible to problematic parasites/bacteria or where it will be cooked by a facility shortly after it arrives.

I 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.

Do you have any pointers or a guide you followed? I’d be interested in trying this

I 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 which can also be really easy to translate. The best recipe I did so far was this one: 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.

It 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/

"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."

Not 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

“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.

Yawn. Wake me up when there's a human population study.

I 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.h...

I'm not a pro. What are the ramifications on stuff I get in the grocery store? What is subject to nitrates?

Dried and cured meats. Sausages. Beef jerkies.

You 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-Ori...

doesn't it just have nitrates from the celery?

The 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.

It 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-a...

Not necessarily dried meats. The article specifically talks about cured meats. Dried meat is often just dehydrated. Jerky is a great example, it can be made with just salt, spice, and gentle heat. No curing involved.

Ofc there's the issue other commenters have pointed out: the FDA requires nitrates in a lot of meat products.

Oh no... Beef jerky?!!!

I bought a basic dehydrator setup for my house just to avoid the sugar and nitrites in store beef jerky. Wayyyy cheaper too

Any links on how to do this you can recommend? I'm down.

Guess 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

Arugula 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-ni...

Nitrates 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/

How much is too much? 15% says the study, 15% of what?

I'm going to eat it (sparingly, as usual) anyway.

:( ruined hotdogs and nuggets for me

Even knowing the risk, I’m amazed at how many it hasn’t stopped. Mind you, millions of people still smoke.

Your last line made me think: “I wonder if it’s actually over a billion?” It is. Around 1.1 billion.

Nuggets aren't cured meat.

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