[HN Gopher] The evidence linking nitrates and nitrites to cancer
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The evidence linking nitrates and nitrites to cancer
Author : YeGoblynQueenne
Score : 69 points
Date : 2021-02-15 18:57 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| tartoran wrote:
| I stay away form processed meats as a genetal rule. I used to
| love processed meats when growing up especially lunchon pork
| meats, weiners, saussages and salamies but I almost stopped
| eating these altogether. I still do but very rarely and I think
| it'd be better to eat less of processed foods in general. Over
| the years I started lowering my food portions such that Im not
| full when finishing a meal, the satiety feeling follows shortly
| after. This has had very good effects on my stomach in particular
| michaelt wrote:
| _> But learning that consumption of processed meat causes an
| additional 34,000 worldwide cancer deaths a year is much more
| chilling. According to Cancer Research UK, if no one ate
| processed or red meat in Britain, there would be 8,800 fewer
| cases of cancer. (That is four times the number of people killed
| annually on Britain's roads.)_
|
| Is this trying to say that 23% of worldwide cancer deaths due to
| meat eating are in the UK?
|
| Or is this just shitty writing?
| fuzxi wrote:
| It reads like they're just vomiting statistics to try to scare
| the reader.
| [deleted]
| tekstar wrote:
| I can't speak to what they actually mean, but not all of the
| 8800 British cancer cases will die from cancer, so I guess you
| missed that difference in the sentence.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Right, the most sympathetic reading of that paragraph I can
| think of is that they're intentionally grouping numbers of
| cases and comparing them to numbers of deaths to be
| intentionally misleading about the scale of the problem.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| See also https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/research/update-on-
| cancer-de...
| idhypueijk wrote:
| That data makes it seem that cancer is highly associated with
| corpulence.
| cheschire wrote:
| Wow smokers went from 42% to 14%?! I knew I noticed fewer
| smokers but had no idea it was that dramatic.
|
| edit: ahh the 42% stat was from 1965, not 1999 like the rest of
| the information.
| jpcooper wrote:
| I always thought Francis Bacon was a decent chap. The artist,
| that is.
| drannex wrote:
| Every time another post comes up about this I hate to the bearer
| of bad (good?) news, but the entire concept is predicated on the
| fact that it increases risk of colorectal cancer by 18%.
|
| That doesn't mean your chance of cancer is 18%, that means your
| chance of that type of cancer goes from below 5% (4.3% for men,
| and 4% for women)[1] to <5.07%. A change of at the most .9%
| difference risk. Colorectal is also one of most treatable, and
| curable cancers there are.
|
| And this isn't just bacon, this is for all processed meats, to
| reduce your chance you would have to eliminate all processed meat
| for a reduction of less than 1% in your chance at that specific
| type of cancer. I hate to compare anything to tobacco, but
| smoking tobacco increases your risk of cancer not by 18%, but
| 2,500%.
|
| To quote a Wired article on this very topic that keeps getting
| rehashed [2]:
|
| > The IARC is an organization of scientists, not policy makers.
| It publishes monographs to identify hazards and sift them into
| five piles: group 1 (carcinogenic), group 2A (probably
| carcinogenic), group 2B (possibly carcinogenic), group 3 (not
| classifiable), and group 4 (probably not carcinogenic.) Group 1
| includes processed meat, and also asbestos. Also alcohol (boo!)
| and sunlight (yup!). Identifying hazards involves looking at
| existing data--lots and lots of it--to do essentially a meta-
| analysis of studies already out there. And it's relatively
| objective. "Hazard identification is the process that is the
| closest to the generation of scientific data," say Paolo
| Boffetta, a cancer epidemiologist at Mount Sinai who has served
| on similar WHO panels. In other words, IARC studies the studies
| and generates numbers.
|
| > What the IARC doesn't do--and where things get a lot fuzzier--
| is risk assessment, or figuring out the danger to humans in the
| real world.
|
| [1] https://www.cancer.org/cancer/colon-rectal-
| cancer/about/key-...
|
| [2] https://www.wired.com/2015/10/who-does-bacon-cause-cancer-
| so...
|
| Edit: Added source for cancer risk and fixed my rounding mistake
| (5.9% -> 5.07%)
| ip26 wrote:
| It's my hope that we'll find a better, non-nitrate way to
| combat botulism. That's the only reason nitrates are added-
| cured meats can sometimes foster botulism.
|
| 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.
| anaerobicover wrote:
| There are a number of vegetable sources of nitr{a,i}tes as
| well. A stick of celery has more (potassium IIRC) nitrate
| than a typical piece of salami has (sodium) nitrate. This is
| why celery juice is an ingredient in so-called "nitrate-free"
| cured products. They're not actually nitrate-free, they just
| use celery juice as a source instead of adding a pure powder,
| so they don't have to list "sodium nitrate" explicitly.
|
| https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/food/celery-juice-
| viable-a...
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| >> It's my hope that we'll find a better, non-nitrate way to
| combat botulism. That's the only reason nitrates are added-
| cured meats can sometimes foster botulism.
|
| Well, there's some evidence that nitrate-cured meats aren't
| safer from botulism than the alternative; and the evidence
| comes from the (British) meat industry itself:
|
| _An [internal report] written for the British meat industry
| reveals nitrites do not protect against botulism - the chief
| reason ham and bacon manufacturers say they use the
| chemicals._
|
| _The study, conducted for the British Meat Processors
| Association (BMPA) by the scientific consultancy Campden, and
| marked "confidential", examines the growth of the toxin
| Clostridium botulinum in the processing of bacon and ham._
|
| _It is understood that the paper, seen by the Observer, was
| commissioned to provide evidence that nitrites, which have
| long been linked to cancer, are essential to protect
| consumers from food poisoning and, in particular, botulism, a
| potentially fatal disease. But, in what appears to be a major
| blow to the industry's claims, the research found there was
| no significant growth of the bacteria in either the nitrite-
| free or the nitrite-cured samples that were tested._
|
| _The paper concludes: "The results show that there is no
| change in levels of inoculated C botulinum over the curing
| process, which implies that the action of nitrite during
| curing is not toxic to C botulinum spores at levels of 150ppm
| [parts per million] ingoing nitrite and below."_
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/food/2019/mar/23/nitrites-ham-
| ba...
|
| (edited out some sensationalist language in the quoted
| passage).
| ip26 wrote:
| Good to know! I find myself thinking of flame retardants in
| furniture. Most fatal house fires were started by
| smoldering cigarettes, and so flame testing of furniture is
| designed around these conditions. But smoking has plummeted
| in prevalence, while flame retardants have demonstrated all
| kinds of negative health impacts.
| bennysonething wrote:
| Thanks for this. Read this article few years ago and
| practically cut out bacon because of it.
|
| How much does my cancer risk increase from alcohol?
| folli wrote:
| >Colorectal is also one of most treatable, and curable cancers
| there are.
|
| Iff diagnosed early enough.
| ortusdux wrote:
| The new at-home screening kits look promising.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| Another point is that there's a sub-linear relationship between
| mortality rates and life expectancy. Intuitively, it seems like
| a 10% increase in mortality should cut your life expectancy
| from 81 to 73.
|
| 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.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| >> Colorectal is also one of most treatable, and curable
| cancers there are .
|
| 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.
| pvaldes wrote:
| The biggest problem is that some people [typically on rural
| areas that have a traditional disdain for science], only have
| access to drinking water contaminated with nitrites from
| farms. For many people there is a chronic daily dose, even if
| they are vegans.
| tomxor wrote:
| > 5% risk is a gigantic chance. 5%! One in twenty!
|
| I can't tell whether or not you understand that 5% is
| supposed to be the base chance of getting colorectal cancer.
| Cancer in general is very common, we basically all get it
| eventually in some form or other. The difference nitrate
| processed meats are supposed to make is an 18% increase of
| that base 5%, moving 5% to 5.9% (this is why the article
| feels a little deceptive, because the correct interpretation
| of the statistic completely relies on the word "by" and a
| preexisting knowledge of the baseline statistic).
|
| > I don't think I'd accept the risk to give up a piece of my
| colon for the joy of eating ham.
|
| I'm not saying it's nothing, but to be clear the OP is
| suggesting the _absolute_ difference is 0.9%. So that is the
| additional risk you would be accepting over your lifetime for
| regularly eating it.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| >> I can't tell whether or not you understand that 5% is
| supposed to be the base chance of getting colorectal
| cancer.
|
| I suggest the following as an easy to make, strong
| interpretation of my comment: "5% chance is already pretty
| high and I would prefer to do nothing that increases it any
| further".
|
| To clarify, that was the intepretation I had in mind when
| writing the comment (and still now).
|
| Edit:
|
| >> Cancer in general is very common, we basically all get
| it eventually in some form or other.
|
| That sounds counterintuitive and from a cursory look at
| incidence statistics, it seems to be an exaggeration. e.g.
| Wikipedia says:
|
| _About 20% of males and 17% of females will get cancer at
| some point in time while 13% of males and 9% of females
| will die from it.[196]_
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer#Epidemiology
| drannex wrote:
| I over-rounded on the 5% number (since fixed), real stats are
| 4.3% for men and 4% for women and with an 18% increase that
| brings it to <5.07%, not 5.9%.
|
| I've included the source in the comment as well.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Thank you.
| lostcolony wrote:
| Well, there are some natural nitrates/nitrites in celery
| powder, which is generally what is used in more 'natural'
| processed meats.
| pjc50 wrote:
| I think a big lesson of the COVID era is that people care about
| this kind of thing - statistical mortality - a lot less than
| you'd expect.
| NovaJehovah wrote:
| I think it's mainly been an experiment in how much the average
| person will limit their own pursuit of happiness for the sake
| of lowering the mortality risk of others.
|
| 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.
| dabbledash wrote:
| And conversely that many people are willing to give up quality
| of life, perhaps indefinitely, to decrease risk. To state the
| obvious, there's an inherent tension in the fact that some of
| the things that make life pleasurable increase the chances of
| cutting that life short. People reach different conclusions
| about how to strike the balance, and I don't think there's one
| right answer.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| > People reach different conclusions about how to strike the
| balance, and I don't think there's one right answer.
|
| Yes Certainly. For instance if my dad had died of covid the
| decrease in my quality of life from that would have been
| permanently effected. Where yours had, your quality of life
| would be unchanged.
| snapetom wrote:
| As stated in the article, the core problem is nitrates/nitrites.
| This isn't a bacon-specific problem. It's a problem in all cured
| meats - hot dogs, SPAM, salami, etc.
|
| Fortunately, there's plenty of "uncured" bacon and hot dog
| options in grocery stores these days. You just have to read the
| packaging.
| [deleted]
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| Note that lots of those products say "no added nitrites or
| nitrates except those naturally occurring" in other
| ingredients. And then one of the ingredients is celery powder,
| which is only added for its nitrates. It's awfully misleading
| packaging.
|
| If you're eating bacon and it tastes like bacon, it's cured.
| lol768 wrote:
| > If you're eating bacon and it tastes like bacon, it's
| cured.
|
| In Northern Ireland there's a producer (Finnebrogue) which
| sells nitrite-free bacon (no, it doesn't contain celery -
| "adding nitrites from vegetable extracts for a technological
| function and/or as a preservative, is banned by the European
| Union") . It's pretty decent, tastes like bacon.
|
| > The range replaces the nitrites commonly used to cure bacon
| and give them their recognisable colour with a Mediterranean
| fruit and spice extract it claims matches the shelf life of
| traditionally produced bacon and ham.
|
| They seem to be mostly useless at preventing Botlusim anyway:
| https://www.theguardian.com/food/2019/mar/23/nitrites-ham-
| ba...
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| >> It's pretty decent, tastes like bacon.
|
| What I've found is that peoples' tastes develop according
| to what we usually eat, so "tastes like bacon" is different
| if you're used to eating meats cured with nitrites, than
| what it would be if you didn't.
|
| I've said this story before on HN: in Greece, where I'm
| currently at, about 80% of the milk in supermarket
| refrigerated isles is UHT (Ultra Heat Treated). UHT milk
| doesn't need to be stored in a refrigerator, in fact that's
| the whole point. But, I guess, they [1] put it there so
| people will buy it thinking it's "fresh" (i.e. low-heat
| pasteurised and about a week old). The fact that so much of
| the milk sold in supermarkets is UHT -and so little is
| "fresh"- tells me that it basically works and people buy
| it.
|
| The interesting thing is that, if you ask Greeks whether
| they prefer "fresh" milk or UHT milk, the chances are
| they'll tell you they prefer "fresh" milk. There was a
| study at some point -sorry that I don't have a reference-
| that said I think that consumers around the EU, including
| Greeks, prefer "fresh" milk.
|
| Conclusion: at least Greeks drink UHT milk and have no idea
| it's UHT.
|
| ... _even though it tastes distinctly unlike fresh milk_.
|
| They're probably used to the taste and think that's what
| fresh milk tastes like. And don't let me get started on how
| most "fresh" milk doesn't taste of anything...
|
| ____________
|
| [1] "They" is the dairy industry that ask for it - and the
| supermarkets that don't care and comply.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| It seems this is more common in the US than in Europe, for
| now:
|
| _The meat has been cured with nitrites extracted from
| vegetables, a practice not permitted by the European
| Commission because of evidence that it increases the risk of
| bowel cancer. But it is allowed in the US, where the product
| is often labelled as "all natural". The powerful US meat
| industry is likely to insist that the export of nitrite-cured
| meat is a condition of a post-Brexit UK-US trade deal, which
| the UK government is under intense pressure to deliver._
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/14/uk-us-
| brexit-t...
| eloff wrote:
| Most, maybe all, of those options (at least in Canada where I
| live) also use nitrates, just from e.g. Celery extract. So you
| also have to know about that trick and look for it.
| m-ee wrote:
| Be careful, a lot of the "uncured" or "no added nitrites" have
| fine print that say "except those found in celery salt", which
| is a natural source of nitrites
| ip26 wrote:
| One source I learned about recently is sandwich meats like
| packaged deli turkey & chicken. I should have known better, but
| I didn't realize they are cured just like salami, bacon, etc.
| xcskier56 wrote:
| Read the packaging closer. Most of the "uncured" meats use
| concentrated celery salt which is a strong source of nitrates.
| They do this so that they can still "cure" the meat, just
| "naturally". At the end of the day, if the package says
| "uncured" but the back says made with celery salt, its just
| marketing
| tsdlts wrote:
| I wonder why the conversation is all about avoiding nitrates and
| nitrites in bacon and never about avoiding celery, beets,
| radishes, chard, lettuce, spinach, etc. which contain far higher
| amounts.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6240834/
|
| Nice table:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6240834/table/t...
| bengale wrote:
| It is covered in the article that the problem is how it
| interacts with red meat.
| lordnacho wrote:
| According to the article:
|
| " 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. "
| shirakawasuna wrote:
| Please repeat this explanation but for me, a person who can't
| read.
| ip26 wrote:
| I'll humor you- in short, nitrates are fine, but when
| combined with red meat you create new compounds that are
| harmful.
|
| Not unlike how 6ppd in car tires seems safe, but when it
| reacts with ozone, the byproduct kills salmon.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| I remember reading that in the late 1950's the FDA
| limited the amount of nitrites in meat. And also required
| adding ascorbic acid. The idea is that when you cook meat
| treated with nitrites the ascorbic acid destroys the
| nitrite before they have a chance to form nitrosamines.
|
| Might be that nitrites in uncooked vegies is fine.
| ip26 wrote:
| Perhaps a small irony, the nitrates in green vegetables &
| beets actually enhances athletic performance.
| matsemann wrote:
| Yeah, I've only heard about nitrates in the context of red
| beet juice for long distance races. When trying to search
| about the merits of it, I was always confused about it
| being so heavily touted as both bad and good, but this
| explains it.
| [deleted]
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| Call me crazy but I've never considered eating bacon "safe" in as
| much as I considered eating a Ribeye "safe". Also who are these
| mythological deep bacon state actors convincing everyone eating
| bacon is safe? I question the premise of the subtitle. I went
| deep into the article searching for clues, but all the only
| substance there was some squabbles around nitrite based curing
| versus traditional salt curing.
| ping_pong wrote:
| > But learning that consumption of processed meat causes an
| additional 34,000 worldwide cancer deaths a year is much more
| chilling.
|
| I'm sorry but 34,000 worldwide deaths a year is literally
| nothing. The US has over 30,000 auto deaths per year. Around the
| world, there are over 1 million auto deaths per year.
|
| If 34,000 deaths a year from processed foods is important, then
| there are many, many things that are a much easier way to save
| lives than getting rid of hot dogs and bacon.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| You are trying to draw usefulness from the article but the
| point of the article is not to inform but to generate anxiety
| and with it ad revenue.
|
| 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.
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