Beyond just being loaded with “artery-clogging saturated fat” and sodium, bacon has been long considered unhealthy due to the use of nitrates and nitrites in the curing process. Many conventional doctors, and well-meaning friends and relatives, will say you’re basically asking for a heart attack or cancer by eating the food many Paleo enthusiasts lovingly refer to as “meat candy”.
The belief that nitrates and nitrates cause serious health problems has been entrenched in popular consciousness and media. Watch this video clip to see Steven Colbert explain how the coming bacon shortage will prolong our lives thanks to reduced nitrates in our diets.
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In fact, the study that originally connected nitrates with cancer risk and caused the scare in the first place has since been discredited after being subjected to a peer review. There have been major reviews of the scientific literature that found no link between nitrates or nitrites and human cancers, or even evidence to suggest that they may be carcinogenic. Further, recent research suggests that nitrates and nitrites may not only be harmless, they may be beneficial, especially for immunity and heart health. Confused yet? Let’s explore this issue further.
Find out why you shouldn’t be concerned about nitrates & nitrites in bacon.
Where Does Nitrate/Nitrite Exposure Come From?
It may surprise you to learn that the vast majority of nitrate/nitrite exposure comes not from food, but from endogenous sources within the body. (1)
When it comes to food, vegetables are the primary source of nitrites. On average, about 93% of nitrites we get from food come from vegetables. It may shock you to learn that one serving of arugula, two servings of butter lettuce, and four servings of celery or beets all have more nitrite than 467 hot dogs. (2) And your own saliva has more nitrites than all of them! So before you eliminate cured meats from your diet, you might want to address your celery intake. And try not to swallow so frequently.
All humor aside, there’s no reason to fear nitrites in your food, or saliva. Recent evidence suggests that nitrites are beneficial for immune and cardiovascular function; they are being studied as a potential treatment for hypertension, heart attacks, sickle cell and circulatory disorders. Even if nitrites were harmful, cured meats are not a significant source, as the USDA only allows 120 parts per million in hot dogs and bacon. Also, during the curing process, most of the nitrite forms nitric oxide, which binds to iron and gives hot dogs and bacon their characteristic pink color. Afterwards, the amount of nitrite left is only about 10 parts per million.
And if you think you can avoid nitrates and nitrites by eating so-called “nitrite- and nitrate-free” hot dogs and bacon, don’t be fooled. These products use “natural” sources of the same chemical like celery and beet juice and sea salt, and are no more free from nitrates and nitrites than standard cured meats. In fact, they may even contain more nitrates and nitrites when cured using “natural” preservatives.
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What Happens When You Eat Nitrates and Nitrites
It’s important to understand that neither nitrate nor nitrite accumulate in body. Ingested nitrate from food is converted into nitrite when it contacts our saliva, and of the nitrate we eat, 25% is converted into salivary nitrite, 20% converted into nitrite, and the rest is excreted in the urine within 5 hours of ingestion. (3) Any nitrate that is absorbed has a very short half-life, disappearing from our blood in under five minutes. (4) Some nitrite in our stomach reacts with gastric contents, forming nitric oxide which may have many beneficial effects. (5, 6) You can listen to my podcast “Does Red Meat Increase Your Risk of Death?” for more information on this topic.
In general, the bulk of the science suggests that nitrates and nitrites are not problematic and may even be beneficial to health. Critical reviews of the original evidence suggesting that nitrates/nitrites are carcinogenic reveals that in the absence of co-administration of a carcinogenic nitrosamine precursor, there is no evidence for carcinogenesis. (7) Newly published prospective studies show no association between estimated intake of nitrite and nitrite in the diet and stomach cancer. (8) Nitric oxide, formed by nitrite, has been shown to have vasodilator properties and may modulate platelet function in the human body, improving blood pressure and reducing heart attack risk. (9, 10, 11) Nitrates may also help boost the immune system and protect against pathogenic bacteria (12, 13, 14)
So what do we take from this? There’s no reason to fear nitrates and nitrites in food. No reason to buy nitrate-free, uncured bacon. No reason to strictly avoid cured meats, particularly those from high quality sources (though it may make sense to limit consumption of them for other reasons). In fact, because of concerns about trichinosis from pork, it makes a lot more sense in my opinion to buy cured bacon and other pork products. I do.
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That saturated fat and cholesterol are causing so many health problems is not logical and is more likely an attempt, successful I might add , by groups like the American soybean association who had the money and influence to demonize saturated fats so they could dominate the food oil industry . For thousands of years people in the Philippines and India have been consuming very high amounts of saturated fats mainly from coconut oil yet they suffered from hardly any of the diseases that saturated fats are supposed to cause ! Imagine that and even in western countries saturated fats have predominated with animal fats being king yet again the so called saturated fat caused health problems that Americans suffer from in the last fifty to sixty
years or so were very small in comparison so why the health problems and what could be the causes ? Well how about soybean oil and canola oil and partially hydrogenated oils like margarine and sugar laden soda pop all these have been consumed in much larger quantities in the same timeframe as these diseases started appearing in much higher incidences and even slightly before so logically the finger really points to soybean oil , canola oil , margarine, hydrogenated oils and sugar laden soda pop as being the probable causes of all these health problems. But unfortunately money talks in this country , money sways politicians and doctors and everyone in between to decide what is healthy and what is not ! The truth does not matter to these people and integrity and honor are far from them
Thanks for your input. These people believe in doctors more than God. God says live, the doctor says die. They just hurry home and do it!
frank you are the man. thankyou for that. people need to hear the truth . this medical fraud needs to be exposed, its killing millions. good writing . sat . fat is yummy too. i put coconut oil , butter and cream in my blender with coffee and stevia for the best drink , my wife swears she can run till 5 pm on it alone . we dont have hunger anymore with fat. we lose weight and feel great. its AWESOME i wish the world could learn the truth. and you right about soy and corn. they are factory farmed in massive quantities in the midwest and these people are desperate to sell it ,its in EVERYTHING. i farm my own food ,it seems to be the only way i can get away from it. good luck
Recently the system has come out and admitted that cholesterol drugs are useless. They did not go so far as to admit they are downright deadly and harmful — but they did admit they are totally worthless.
The doctors and insurance companies haven’t heard the news yet, but maybe in another 10 years they may get the message and stop making and prescribing statin drugs.
That’s why we need to be our own doctors, get rid of the TV sets, and use the Internet to investigate and research and make up our own minds as to what is true or not true. Beats listening to paid corporates just trying to make money off us at best, or kill, weaken, sicken us at worst.
A number of years ago a Statin med was crippling me and I was also in a great deal of pain. Just listen to the side effect of the ads for the various meds. That is about as bad as it gets. Knowing the TRUTH about health issues including nutrition is extremely complicated and confusing. Years ago, I read the advice “Eat Real Food” and I think that puts things simply. There is no one/group that has totally 100% balanced truth… there is always something that is incomplete information. Man created chemicals are more apt to have unintended side affects whether meds or nutrition additives… my opinion. Our world is amazingly complicated and balanced. Just take salt… the 2 ingredients that make up sale are poisonous… but combined they become a must have to sustain life. So even true facts can be misleading. Too much salt is not good either. One of my key words in life is BALANCE. I prefer real, natural food, etc. Having said that, take the subject to using celery juice as the nitrate. It is difficult to measure how much nitrate is in the celery plant… too little, too much? So a much larger amount is used to insure that it is not too little. One argument is that the form that is not from a natural plant is more easily controlled in terms of amount. I also read that vitamin C can counteract the nitrate/nitrite the affects of mixing with amines which is where the real health problem is said to be. After much thought, I lean toward eat the real food as much as possible, avoid or limit the processed food, eat a healthy balance… and take a good, well absorbed multi-vitamin/multi-mineral supplement. Minerals need to be included due to our bodies not making them and many soils are depleted of many minerals. If the minerals are not in the soil then they won’t be in our food. Granted fertilizers do add ingredients to our soil… not necessarily a completely good thing. We are not as rural in living as we once were so times have changed in terms of food independence. We are more dependent on companies as a source of our food. Ending with the word BALANCE.
Ah, statins; created by pharmaceutical companies PURELY to make money. Their next big money maker will probably be something to control blood pressure.
Re: Vitamins and minerals–How many people know that eating grains depletes their bodies of vitamins and minerals; which kind of makes taking a Vit/Min supplement pointless if eating bread, cereal, pasta, corn, etc.
Agriculture = Downfall of humanity
And why oh why can’t meat producers use salt (and Rosemary) to preserve meat? Salt that hasn’t been pulverized and bleached, that is! 🙂
Your article confuses the presence of nitrites in food with the action of nitrates in meats to form nitrosamines in your stomach which are carcinogenic, as I’m sure you know.
You guys are pretty smart, so I think it’s pretty clear that your omissions and irrelevant facts in this article are intentional. If you really want to do something good, write something like this:
You want to eat bacon and sausage? Go ahead. They taste great! Be aware, though, that the saturated fat in these meats can lead to clogged and hardened arteries, obesity, increased risk of strokes and Alzheimer’s disease, reduced testosterone and increased estrogen if you’re a man, and the nitrates we put in them to keep you from getting sick combine with the amino acids in the meat to form carcinogens in your stomach, increasing your risk of stomach cancer. Be an informed consumer, and don’t fall for misleading articles by industry hacks. Thank you.
“saturated fat in these meats can lead to…reduced testosterone and increased estrogen if you’re a man”
Are you saying they don’t lead to that if you’re a woman?
Woman should be careful not to eat soy protein, which mimics estrogen and has proved to increased risk of breast cancer.
The saturated fat and cholesterol myths have been thoroughly debunked, after being based on flawed ‘science’ from the begining, and promoted via processed food company advertising, eager to sell us more packaged food. Every illness that was blamed on saturated fat and cholesterol now looks to be caused by excess sugar, grains and processed oils, which makes perfect sense if you consider that humans have been eating animal products for thousands of years, and all these modern diseases such as heart dosease, diabetes, cancer etc have only appeared in the 100 years or so since all the processed foods and sugar have become the main staples in our diet.
Some will argue that these disease are caused by our increased lifespan, and this too is misleading, by using ‘average lifespan’ statistics the figure is drastically reduced for ancient times because of a very high infant mortality.
There are also issues regarding the factory farming methods and the over-use of antibiotics and growth hormones in livestock, as well as the quantity of artificial fertilizers and chemicals used to grow crops, and we are starting to realise that science is not as reliable as we thought when big money interests get involved with the politicts.
It’s nice to see a person that knows what he’s talking about.
It took me years to figure out that processed meats and other processed foods were the primary cause of my joint swelling and migraines. My assumption is that it’s the high levels of nitrites. Though I still get nitrites in many sources, I have much less trouble when I avoid heavily processed foods.
Watch out for vegetables because they’re loaded with them.
I agree about 97%. You go boy!
you dont have a clue dude, cholesterol does not do what you think. you have been fooled. saturated fat is the best food.
even burning low glycemic load. satiating food. we have been lied to and you are believing the lie.
LOL! Sorry to laugh, but I can’t believe someone reading Kresser’s site holds these views. I don’t even know where to start…but the cholesterol/saturated fat theory of heart disease has been unproven and disproven many times in the last 50 years. I’ve been reading esteemed experts on this topic for at least 20 years. Take a break and watch “Fat Head” free on YouTube or Hulu, for a very easy introduction to this topic.
Saturated fat is what our bodies crave. This has been known for over a century. Dr. Weston A Price traveled the world to discover the diets of healthy indigenous people, and Ansel Keys’ made up charts showing death from saturated fats was a scam. Google it and read up on how this big fairy tale about how Crisco and margarine and vegetable oils are ‘healthy’
and real traditional fats people have eaten for millennia were supposed to be deadly food. Butter is a superfood — margarine is a super-poison. Did you just stumble on to the Internet and have not read up on anything in a few years? Anybody even mildly informed knows that real fat, butter, animal fats, coconut oil, saturated fat is what our bodies need to be healthy. This is beyond dispute at this point. Maybe start your research by Googling up the Weston A Price website, or catch Sally Fallon’s lecture ‘The Oiling of America’ on YouTube.
So much wrong rick.
1. Saturated fat is good for you.
2. Alzheimer’s risk is associated with excess carbohydrates. When you eat a high fat low carb diet your brain runes on ketones, and runs better. When you eat carbs your brain runs on glucose, and ends up getting brain plaque. People with severe brain disorders like epilectics often have to go on a full ketogenic diet (butter for breakfast, lunch, dinner), no carbs at all, super high fat, but it ends up stopping their seizures.
3. Saturated fat intake doesn’t decrease testosterone… do you know what your body uses to make testosterone? Dietary cholesterol. Seriously. The stuff you get from foods that are high in saturated fat (eggs and steak). Google exists, look it up.
I just stumbled upon this article. I love bacon! However my wife is on home hemo dialysis after struggling with calciphylaxis, a devastating disease, for over a year. EVERY dietitian specializing in kidney patients, EVERY nephrologist, and ALL the published material for CKD and ESRD patients say stay away from the nitrates found in cured meat like bacon. I know I am talking about a small percentage of the population, and the article may very well be true for those of us with normal kidney function, but for some it is not a “myth” but a hard reality of daily life.
Curing agents are preservatives, which are antibiotics, they kill bacteria and prevent their growth. Besides nitrites forming nitrosoamines (carcinogen), the harmful effect of preservatives on our body is that they kill the beneficial bacteria in our digestive tract. Without these beneficial bacteria, we do not digest food into useable compounds! The bacteria does it for us and we absorb the compounds THEY produce, without them we become malnourished. If you want to have optimum health, stay away from preservatives and take in probiotics!!
Contact Dr. Joel Wallach. The general problem is that the vessels that carry blood into the kidney is simply blocked. It can be unblocked to allow filtering. No MD. Will tell you that, , because they don’t know. Be blessed
You’re absolutely right, the article assumes healthy bodily function. Reduced function of the kidneys or liver are literally the only things that allow nitrates and nitrites to accumulate as these organs, when healthy, are beyond efficient at removing them from the body. As with pretty much anything, overaccumulation is the issue, which is why for healthy people, moderation is suggested. I’ll be praying for your wife and your family.
Thank you for bringing this subject up.
As someone who has cared for people with CHF (Congestive Heart Failure) and Kidney Disease, I can tell you that without a doubt, nitrates will put a patient in the hospital quicker than anything else. They cause fluid retention.
For someone w/ CHF that means fluid in the lungs. I’ve witnessed one man who had it CHF for 10+ years manage it well; then after eating a single hot dog he was in the ER the following day with a CHF episode.
Yes, it is VERY important for people afflicted with CHF, Kidney Disease, AND also COPD to follow a low sodium diet in general, but even more important for them to avoid all nitrates too.
Sadly, that was never addressed in this article.
Another ‘expert’ trained in the allopathic system. Such people are wilfully blind and ignorant and will not even consider the other side of the story until the world has left them behind where they are still scratching their head wondering why. If you are making a living promoting a sham and harmful system, it’s hard to (one) give up your livelihood of killing and maiming people and (2) face up to the fact that you’ve been a dupe for a very evil system set up exploit and hurt the public.
We would not need to worry about all of these special studies if we would simply stop using all of the chemicals to prepare the food. Eat natural, organic, locally sourced foods and the majority of these problems go away.
Yes, eating uncured bacon has nearly none of the same risks as cured bacon. Definitely buy local, meet the people that grow your food and raise the animals with love. <3
And hold hands and sing Kum-ba-ya and ignore 2 million years of human evolution in favor of whatever is the current “absolute truth” fad in pseudo-science.
Remember, the gurus telling us about the horrors of nitrates and nitrites are the same ones who said we should eliminate fats from our diets and instead consume sugars, who insisted animal/saturated fats were the cause of atherosclerosis, who said eating oats prevented heart disease, who said butter was a killer and margarine was healthier, who demonized whole milk and raw milk, who advocated for saccharine, who promote a diet heavy in grasses and grains, light in animal proteins and with almost no fat, among other myths. All of that nonsense has been absolutely disproven. Every bit of it.
The same establishment also, in the last 45 years, swore with absolute certainty that earth was entering an ice age, that we would deplete the oceans of fish by 1990, that we would be unable to produce enough food to feed the population by 2000, that the ozone holes were going to result in us all dying due to too much UV exposure, and that the arctic ice cap was going to completely melt by 2013. And that’s just what I remember off the top of my head.
The real mystery is why anybody listens to the establishment alarmists at all. The sky isn’t falling.
Fact: Some study done by propeller heads with a political axe to grind doesn’t undo or trump a few hundred (or thousand) years of human observation.
It’s funny to read the assortment of comments left by all of you fine folks. Here is the reality of it all. For every business or group or whatever, there is another business or group or whatever trying to deface it so that their interests are perceived by the consumer as being more healthful or more pro-life or whatever the case may be. For every study that shows nitrates/nitrites are bad, there are equal numbers that show just the opposite. Just like politics and religion, we will believe what we want to believe and as for me I choose the bacon!
The problem is it’s hard to measure the lethal dose.
How many mgs. are in an Oscar Mayer hot dog? A lethal dose for my weight would be 2,400 mgs.
“Human Toxicity Values:
The lethal dose of potassium nitrate for an adult ranges from 54 to 462 mg/kg.
[Burden EHWJ; Analyst 86: 429-33 (1961) as cited in Health Advisories for Legionella and Seven Inorganics p.98 (1987) PB87-235586] **PEER REVIEWED**”
http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/sis/search/a?dbs+hsdb:@term+@DOCNO+1227
Chris Kresser has no axe to grind and nothing to profit. He’s offering free advice online regarding a healthy diet. We are all free to research this subject ourselves, and I doubt very much that Mr. Kresser is on the payroll for Armour or the bacon companies. I suppose he might be — anything is possible, and my own complaint with the meat companies is that they are buying their meat from CAFOs and animals that are raised in confined conditions and fed a ton of antibiotics.
I say baloney, nitrates do cause problems,, so are you saying everything is imaginary, and the headaches I get after eating something with sodium nitrate is fake, I may not die from the nitrate, but I can assure you the headaches are real, so something is going on, it does not take a scientist to figure out that’s not normal,
who the hell wants to live forever anyway? I am happy with the food I eat and trust that when it’s my time, it’s time. I will not blame food or alcohol or anything else… I will just enjoy!
But the question is, will you be spending the last 20 years of your life in pain, medicated on multiple drugs, and/or crippled in some way by chronic disease? It is happening far too often because people are not paying attention.
Very well said, DWS. You and the rest of us will probably be paying for Jason’s healthcare during those last 20 years!
But those 20 years in pain and the nursing home are just because those people haven’t figured out the solution, that suicide is painless.
But it brings on many changes.
The average age people live these days is down by about 40+ years. We have the ability to live to 150 years old, but only if we eat the correct foods and supplement. The start of the industrial age was the end of good nutrition in our foods. Even organic foods which are grown using the GMO seed don’t contain any more nutrition on them than the GMO version, they only don’t have the extra chemicals. It’s said if you were the richest person the world who ate nothing but the finest foods you still would not be getting anywhere near the proper nutrition that you need to protect your genes from diseases and illnesses.
Aw sweetie, you’re cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. Get help.
How does sodium nitrate cause headaches? What is the mechanism?
Have you tried a double blind study to determine whether or not sodium nitrate is actually causing your headaches?
I don’t know about sodium nitrate, but sodium nitrite is a vasodilator. Apparently I’m sensitive to it because, for me, it opens up the blood vessels way too much and I get a migraine.
I have the same problem with dark chocolate and aspirin.
I’m not sure how or why others might react to it, and I know I’m far from the norm (as usual).
That’s a shame. I don’t know whether you’ve looked into histamine intolerance? Do any other fermented foods like sauerkraut, wine, coffee or fermented foods give you trouble?
Some things are like night and day. For me, a single bite of a hot dog would give me the headache so severe that most people only get it if they are dying.
Liked what you had to say so much John that I did not want to read anymore comments. Thank for helping me to move on.
Have you ever considered that you are getting headaches from the tyramine in the cured meat and not the nitrite/nitrates? My husband also suffers from migraines. If he eats too much any or a combinations of these foods it gives him a migraine.
http://www.webmd.com/migraines-headaches/guide/tyramine-and-migraines
Nitrites are the killer, stay away from Sodium Nitrite (NaNO2)!
Sounds like dehydration might be your problem. Drink more water?
So…..let’s examine….added chemicals in food = GOOD. I think I understand. No thanks, I’ll stick with Paleo and Nitrate free.
Anyone looking for evidence of the lack of reading comprehension taught in US schools need only look to this comment for proof.
That, of course, assumes the commenter even bothered to read the article, (which is iffy at best).
No sources, no credibility.
You do realize that the entire article is sourced throughout right?
… and yet so many “scientific studies” are bang on true…
Not to say I’m agreeing Nitrates are fine/acceptable, they are not.
Just simply spawning more comments encouraging people to do their own tests instead of relying on others apparently “in the know”
Stupid insta-epic generation.
“So…..let’s examine….added chemicals in food = GOOD. I think I understand. No thanks, I’ll stick with Paleo and Nitrate free.”
All Paleo diet food is made of chemicals. 🙂
If it’s cured, it contains nitrates. Bacon cured with celery salt often has a higher concentration of nitrates than conventionally cured bacon. But continue believing you’re nitrate-free.
Refrigerators are a relatively new thing — very new. How did people preserve their food before the refrigerator came along? One way that’s been used for millennia is salt. Cured meat has been around longer than Noah’s Ark.
I can now eat bacon without feeling guilty about it.
Thank U.
I wonder why my bowel movements take on such arbitrary forms after a healthy hot dog dinner. Are nitrates so good at reducing my ability to digest food that I’m otherwise missing the health benefits of eating more of these chemicals?
Nitrites are more specifically an antibiotic (preservative), which kills and prevents growth of the bacteria in your digestive tract. The beneficial bacteria digest food into compounds your body can employ. Without them you are unable to digest food properly. Stay away from all preservatives (Sodium benzoate, potassium sorbate, sodium nitrite, bisulfites)!!
Chris, I’m wondering about the chemical structure of nitrate and nitrite in bacon vs. water – is it for the same reason that I shouldn’t be concerned about the concentration or presence of nitrate/nitrite in my water as in bacon?
Ther is the story of the woman who has eaten bacon every day, and she is 105. If it is true , as many poster think, that eating bacon caused cancer then why doesn’t she have it? Apparently, it did not cause cancer in her so one can reasonably say that it does not necessarily cause cancer. So many studies have been done that are completely worthless. Most of them are ones that use sample groups and questionnaires. These types of studies can only find a CORRELATION, and that is only if the memories and answers are correct. A correlation does not prove a cause.
Since there are so many OTHER factors that are also said to cause cancer and none of those factors are ever examined, the studies are worthless.
For instance, it is know that taking “FOLIC ACID” can cause cancer. The body can only convert a small amount to Methyl Folate- which is what the body uses as a vitamin. The unconverted Folic acid though is carcinogenic. Much of air food is “fortified” with folic acid, such as bread products for instance. That hot dog “bun” may be far worse for you than the hot dog, especially if you are already eating a lot of fortified products such as commercially baked breads or eating “breakfast cereals”.
Another substance in our food supply that is related to increased rates of cancer is “ferrous sulfate”, or iron. This is not a form of iron that the body readily utilizes and can greatly increase the amount of “free” or “unbound” iron in the blood. The body tries to neutralize and store this iron by binding it to a protein called ferritin. Free iron is extremely damaging as it causes a cascade of free radicals. it also feeds cancer and makes it grow incredibly fast.
Instead of worrying about bacon would be better off eliminating the bowl of “Total” breakfast cereal as it is “fortified” with both folic acid and ferrous sulfate.
sugar is what causes cancer low ph with a fermenting processes is what causes the cells to reproduce has been know since about the 1930s’
Is blood sugar the problem or insulin? Or are you talking about just eating something with sugar in it like a cupcake? Bad ole sugar… our bodies need that too. What about inflammation?
Was the bacon eaten by the woman cured? Doubtful since they only started well after she was born curing meats with toxic food additives. Eat all the bacon you want, just make sure it’s uncured.
Great post. Thanks!
I thought the nitrosamine situation in cooked cured meats had something to do with high heat vs low and slow. (?)
That’s the point. The author misses what’s important in an effort to justify eating something he wants to eat just because he wants to eat it. Follow what is real science and not pick and choose what you want to hear to suit your needs.
The high heat vs lower heat cooking is the formation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (meat) and acrylamides (plant matter), which are toxic compounds in burned and fried food. Nitrosoamines form in your body, they can only be prevented by Vitamin C intake. Why waste your Vitamin C on food that contains toxic additives?
Hey Kevin, your knowledge of the matter seem very extended, I would like to talk to you about something in private do you mind ? I think I found your linkedIN profile but it needs premium to contact people there I remember..I’m Itachi Uchiha in Skype, the blue avatar 🙂
This article goes on and on about nitrates and nitrites and how they are naturally formed in your body. But it leaves off one important detail: the cooking of nitrates causes the formation of nitrosamines, which are a known carcinogen! So yes yes yes, nitrates in bacon are a bad thing! The drawback is that nitrate-free bacon will be more susceptible to spoilage and botulism. So it would be a good idea to freeze such bacon until you’re almost ready to use it. Here is an article from the Oregon State University website that I used to draw my conclusions: http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/f-w00/nitrosamine.html
Chronic headaches maybe more attributable just to a lack of hydration and the intake of excessive sugar. Sugar is somehow at the root of all headaches.
Eh – not if you are otherwise fine, but the headaches occur only when you ingest certain foods or a few other triggers (incoming storms, excess caffeine, etc).
For me, it’s a blood flow issue. Taking magnesium helps regulate that blood flow, but it won’t entirely stop the impact of a vasodilator, and that’s when the trouble starts.
I can’t take baby aspirin either.
Two friends with migraines and one friend with sinus headaches found that if they rub DMSO where the head hurts, both types of headaches disappear in about five minutes.
If you don’t know what DMSO is or where to get it, I wrote an article on it, viewable. for free at: http://www.michaelmooney.net/DMSO.html
Many blessings!
Michael
Coming from my chem teacher who talks about dmso, he said people use it to use over different pain killers to help them absorb into the skin, but you are also absorbing other foreign matter that has been sitting on your skin into your body.
Well you clean your skin before applying and I wouldn’t put it over a tattoo, as it might dissolved the tattoo and carry the dyes into circulation.
For those who suffer from migraines, nitrates and nitrites are no myth, but represent a serious health threat. Roughly 10% of the population in the U.S. suffer from migraines. Foods containing nitrites or nitrates will usually trigger a migraine in those susceptible, within a few minutes, often increasing in intensity until the substance is sufficiently metabolized, which can take nearly an entire day. Migraines are not only subjectively painful, but they are associated with reduced cognitive and neurological function.
Chris, the danger is not in the nitrates or nitrites themselves but in their conversion to the carcinogenic nitrosamines, which will happen only in the presence of amines, found in large quantities in meat but not in plant foods. Following is a link to a study on this topic published last year in the British Journal of Cancer. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3553522/
Isn’t the concern with nitrates related to the conversion to nitrosamines when the meat is heated? Is it a myth that nitrosamines are carcinogenic?
Yes, the concern is related to the conversion to nitrosamines. This happens in our digestive tract in the presence of amines, which are highly concentrated in meats but not in vegetables. That’s why nitrates/nitrites in meats are considered carcinogenic but not in vegetables.
Just curious, so what happens if you eat meats (containing amines) and vegetables (containing nitrates/nitrites) at the same time? Will those together be converted into even more nitrosamines? Honest question, I’m no health expert. Just interested.
I have stage 4 kidney disease and the doctors say no bacon,ham, sausage, lunch meats any processed meat that contain nitrites and preservatives,high salt,sodium.
Eat vegetables,but you are saying some vegetables have more nitrites than bacon,so skip the vegetables and eat the ham and bacon?
thank you
As already mentioned, this article does not distinguish between industrial curing salts – those used in food processing and gunpowder production for that matter – and those naturally occurring. It’s outright irreponsible to write like this. I used to come to this site as a reference guide; not anymore.
I’m sorry to hear about your diagnosis, Jacquie. Your doctor’s advice is spot-on. Nitrates and nitrites in vegetables pose no danger, because the amines needed to convert them to the carcinogenic nitrosamines are present in high concentrations in meats but not in vegetables. An article was published last year in the British Journal of Cancer explaining this crucial difference.
Hi, Jacquie,
You have to buy right vegetables, which do not contain too much nitrate. It is easy to check fresh vegetables and fruit s with Nitrate detector http://www.iterium.com/eng/food
Wish you all the best!!
Knowledge is power!!
This makes no distinction between industrially produced synthetic sodium nitrate and naturally occurring ones. The comments from the many people who know they suffer from these salts speak for themselves.
A quick look at Wikipedia tells us that synthetic, industrial curing salts are also used for making gunpowder:
“The largest accumulations of naturally occurring sodium nitrate are found in Chile and Peru, where nitrate salts are bound within mineral deposits called caliche ore.[4] For more than a century, the world supply of the compound was mined almost exclusively from the Atacama desert in northern Chile until, at the turn of the 20th century, German chemists Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch developed a process for producing ammonia from the atmosphere on an industrial scale (see Haber process). With the onset of World War I, Germany began converting ammonia from this process into a synthetic Chilean saltpeter which was as practical as the natural compound in production of gunpowder and other munitions. By the 1940s, this conversion process resulted in a dramatic decline in demand for sodium nitrate procured from natural sources.”
I recently offended a local butcher by asking if he used curing salts in his sausage: he looked at me with disbelief and potential anger: “NO, nothing here in this shop has that shit in it”.
I won’t come for dinner round your house, Mr. Kresser.
“Let’s take back your health” is the title of the blog. But let’s justify eating bacon–forget the nitrites/ates; it’s loaded with fat, saturated and unsaturated. Anyone that promotes bacon, or the Palio diet for that matter is a quack.
Hello Dane, You’ve been misinformed about fat, as is typical of Americans, since our medical system is a hodge-podge of good information and horribly incorrect information. Both saturated and unsaturated fats are a natural part of our evolutionary diets and good for our health, when they come from truly natural sources, such as organic, pasture-raised, grass-fed dairy. Unfortunately, 95% of American dairy comes from grain-fed beef, in which the fats are basically the inverse of grass-fed beef. Saturated fats, overall are good for us, except that palmitic acid and myristic acid are associated with more cardiovascular disease. Well, grain-fed beef fats have much higher levels of these saturated fats than grass-fed beef fats. Further, grass-fed beef is high in omega-3 fats, like you find in fish, where grain-fed beef has almost none. You can read more about the differences at http://www.michaelmooney.net/HarvardSaysEatRedMeatandDie.html.
I agree with what Michael has said. The mainstream “message” regarding what is healthy and unhealthy to eat, is woefully distorted by conflicting political and financial interests. The science showing that saturated fat and cholesterol do not cause heart disease has been available for many decades, yet it is still being denied, all the while the processed food industry fund junk science studies to try and prove the opposite, in much the same way as the tobacco industry did. It can be argued that the present ongoing debacle with industry-funded health authorities has cause far more injury, suffering and death than the tobacco industry ever did. And when you consider the statistical anomaly known as the “French Paradox”, where French people eat more saturated fat and cholesterol, and smoke more than anywhere in Europe, yet have some of the lowest heart disease and cancer rates – including lung cancer – then it suggests that tobacco causing lung cancer is certainly not the whole story, and that possibly a poor diet, encouraged by false information from authorities, is actually a far greater health risk.
You cannot rely on your doctor to tell you what is right and wrong regarding nutrition, because you can spend one single day reading about nutrition and you will have received more education on the subject than he ever did throughout his entire medical degree.
And you cannot rely on government “health” agencies to give you the complete truth either, when they are are funded by the biggest players in the junk processed food and sugar industry.
There is no alternative to educating yourself, from as many difference sources as you can find, and search out the information that appears to disagree with what you already believe is true, and give it due consideration.
DWS – On asking my GP what I should do to put on a bit more weight, she advise me to have some ‘elevenses’: a salami sandwich and a small glass of wine! I shall never ask her about diet again.
Fiona – hilarious! There was a survey recently into how much nutrition education doctors received during the medical training, and I think the average was about 4 hours!
Luckily people are starting to wise up now because of the interent, and the general public has access to thousands of medical studies etc. When I first started looking into this, around 2001, the only book I could find (that was not a medical text book) was “The cholesterol myths” by Uffe Ravnscov. Now, there are dozens of books, from authors such as Taubes, Kendrick, Enig, etc.
Is is possible to buy nitrite free bacon without sulfites? I an a few I know really react negatively to sulfites…..