IE 11 is not supported. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. Share this —. Follow better. By Samantha Cassetty, RD. Health News Americans are still eating a lot of processed meats, study finds. In addition to list above, processed meat includes any kind of deli meat a. The good news? The amount found in cured foods is relatively low.
Since curing involves preserving food by adding salt, most cured meats are very high in sodium. The American Heart Association recommends limiting sodium to 2, milligrams a day, with an ideal target of no more than 1, mg a day for most adults. High sodium levels have been linked to hypertension high blood pressure and increased risk of cardiovascular disease such as coronary artery disease and stroke.
While other factors may have contributed to these findings, the strong positive correlation between eating cured meat and cancer e. Saying we've been curing meat for a long time is no exaggeration — in fact, it doesn't really do the process justice. According to Walden Labs , we've been curing meat since at least 40, BC. We know because of cave paintings discovered in Sicily, and we suspect we would have used a combination of salt from evaporated sea water and ash from plants to promote the curing and drying process.
That's pretty impressive! Unfortunately, there's a lot we don't know about our history with cured meats. No one is quite sure when we stumbled across the idea of nitrites , but the Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service says it was the ancient Romans who first noticed how cured meat changed color to take on a deeper red color once the process was complete.
That particular effect happens thanks to the nitrites, so even though we only figured out what they were in the 20th century, we knew something was working some kind of culinary magic centuries before that. In , the world had a collective meltdown when the World Health Organization announced they'd found processed meats were a group one carcinogen, which basically meant that they had scientific evidence that eating too much of it would increase your risk of developing certain kinds of cancer, especially bowel.
They were actually talking about a whole bunch of different kinds of meat, but the world only heard one thing: bacon causes cancer. That's still pretty abstract, especially when you're sitting there trying to decide whether or not you should make yourself a BLT. But The Guardian put it this way: globally, 34, cancer-related deaths each and every year were linked to processed meats. That put things in perspective a bit, didn't it? The WHO eventually issued a statement telling everyone to stop overreacting, and the meat industry kicked into damage control mode.
But in the following years, more scientific studies continued to find links between eating processed and cured meats and higher risks of developing certain types of cancers. And the biggest problem was the very thing that makes us reach for a particular pack of cured meat. It's that pink color, isn't it? In case you're not up on your science, you might know potassium nitrate by another name: saltpetre.
Listen to all the hype, and it's easy to believe that nitrates are bad. But it's not that straightforward, says the BBC , and around 80 percent of the nitrates we ingest come not from processed meats but from vegetables. And in those cases, they're a good thing. The nitrates in beets, for example, have been linked to lower blood pressure. They work so well that they're even an active ingredient in some medications, so In their normal state, nitrates are pretty harmless.
When we eat them, the bacteria in our mouths and yes, we all have it , converts some of the nitrates to nitrites, and they're a little different. Once they get to the stomach, that's when reactions are kick-started by the acid there, and it's when there's the chance they're going to turn into something carcinogenic. That happens when they're in the presence of another set of compounds called amines. They form nitrosamines, and those nitrosamines also form in foods when they're subjected to cooking at extremely high temperatures, like what happens in that bacon.
In other words, it's not the nitrates and nitrites themselves that are harmful, it's all down to the processes they undergo. Unfortunately, it's the processes that happen in processed meats that are bad. So here's some depressing news. The WHO report in wasn't new information, and we've known for decades that the nitrates and nitrites present in cured meats are bad for us.
In the s, a pair of British researchers discovered that rats regularly fed these substances had a tendency to develop malignant tumors on their livers. Studies through the s supported those findings, and in , a prominent cancer scientist named William Lijinsky argued that even though humans don't have the same biology as animals, we needed to sit up and take notice of the fact that these substances were known carcinogens. Fridge: Cured meats can last up to two weeks in the refrigerator.
How to Tell if Cured Meat is Bad? Cured meat offers a great, inexpensive alternative to fresh meat. It can last much longer and is not as expensive if purchased in bulk. Unfortunately, some cured meats can also be a breeding ground for bacteria.
The following are some signs that indicate you might have bad, spoiled cured meat: If it smells funky, rotten, or sour. When any mold is present on the surface of the product. The texture of the meat is mushy and wet. The color of the cured meat has changed drastically—for example, from pink to brownish-yellow. If one of these signs is present, you should discard the product.
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