This is Still the Most Dangerous Food In the Supermarket
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In the 1970s, a leading public health scientist called bacon “the most dangerous food in the supermarket” due to its link to cancer. Four decades later, the World Health Organization classified processed meats as a group 1 carcinogen based on the conclusions of over 400 studies.
You may have noticed that none of this appears to have dampened the world’s enthusiasm for bacon.
Unlike with, say, cigarettes—also a group 1 carcinogen—sales of bacon actually increased in some places following the WHO’s warning. “We are sentimental about bacon in a way we never were with cigarettes, and this stops us from thinking straight,” the Guardian reports in deep look at the dangers of bacon and how the meat industry “has for the past 40 years been engaged in a campaign of cover-ups and misdirection to rival the dirty tricks of Big Tobacco.”
Read: Scientists Enormously Excited About Cancer Blood Test
A major takeaway from the Guardian‘s reporting is that it doesn’t have to be this way: We know how to make bacon that is drastically less likely to cause cancer. It comes down to chemicals called nitrates and nitrites that producers add to processed meat.
While these chemicals aren’t carcinogenic on their own, they become that way when they interact with components in red meat. And one French journalist calls it “pure insane crazy madness” that they’re still used in foods like bacon.
While the meat industry says it uses the chemicals to reduce the risk of botulism—and, they claim, because they do everything from controlling blood pressure to “accelerating wound healing”—it’s actually because nitrates and nitrites dramatically speed up the process of curing meats, increasing profits.
Read the full story for why science is partly to blame for our bacon eating and how a better bacon is possible.
Edited via Newser.
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You know I’m a skeptic to a fault, but i wonder about all the things that “cause cancer” and how much of a factor they really are. A recent, credible sounding study I read argues that the largest single factor in cancer is chance. That doesn’t argue for smoking obviously, but many of the things that are “linked to” cancer are a small factor compared to others. Even genetics play a smaller part than it seems.
Bacon may be worse in other respects and of late I’ve become rather reluctant to eat such intelligent and sympathetic animals – some might say superior animals in comparison to many people but we probably all know people who have lived to be 100 without any compliance with these rules. My friend Dottie died last year at 102 she ate all the bad stuff and had a martini every evening so I’m clinging to that fact and ignoring others. Besides, I ride a motorcycle and I’m not afraid of bacon turning left in front of me at an intersection.
I don’t eat meat but this is a good thing right? Husband’s #1 rule of life “J, everything is better with bacon, well everything except sex but hey, wait a second…..”**<<<<<<<<Actual Kent quote
**…. I am NOT giving you the rest of the quote because it was filthy even for this group of miscreants. I'll let you use your own imaginations and most of you will get it right.
LOL! I think I know the follow-up 🙂 I would have liked Kent.
AYUP, part of the reason he was my absolute male mirror because we had the same sense of fun and of the ridiculous and did not worry about saying it out loud. I know I will probably meet someone else sooner or later, but I will NEVER meet anyone like him, ever again in my life. My best friend says whoever you meet is going to have huge shoes to fill and he or she better be up to the task 🙂
A love as you describe comes along just once in life I think. You can love others, but that very first, special love cannot be matched, at least in my humble opinion. It’s been a while since I was in love but I still remember the first time. There’s a song:
“A rose never seems as red, the sky never seems as blue, as when you fall in love for the first time.”
It doesn’t even have to be the first time, just the best time it seems.