4 essential facts about smoked and cured meats

While delicious, cured and smoked meats can be potentially harmful. Here are a few reasons why you should cut them from your diet.

• Cured meats are high in tyramine, which can trigger migraine attacks.
• Tyramine cause an abrupt blood pressure rise, headache and even fatal collapse in those treating depression with monoamine oxidase (MAO) inhibitors.
• Oesophageal and stomach cancers are common where people eat lots of smoked and salt-cured foods.

• Smoking preserves but adds acids, phenols and several toxic — and possibly carcinogenic — substances to the meat. Smoking is now used primarily for flavour.
• Dehydration concentrates meat's nutrients, but the vitamin content is less than that of fresh meat. Air curing is now used mainly for flavour and texture.
• Curing draws water from the meat, which kills microorganisms. The more salt used in curing, the better the meat keeps, but the greater the nutrient-loss.

• Nitrites give cured meats their reddish-pink colour, help inhibit bacterial growth, and slow fat oxidation.
• Critics claim that nitrites combine with amino acids during cooking and digestion. This may form cancer-causing nitrosamines.
• The meat industry insists that nitrite is extremely effective against Clostridium botulinum, which causes botulism.
• The risk of cancer from nitrites in North America is lower than the that of contracting botulism from tainted meat.
• Excessive consumption of the saturated fats in nitrite-preserved foods can increase your risk of coronary disease.

• In North America, stomach-cancer fatalities are down, though processed-meat consumption has increased.
• The reason may partly be that foods cured in North America are less heavily treated than in some countries.
• Most "smoked" foods are actually flavoured with liquid smoke, which doesn't present the same dangers.

Cured and smoked meat may not be the healthy and convenient alternative to fresh meat you may have thought. Consider reducing your consumption of these products, it could reduce your risk for cancer and other illnesses and diseases.