There's more nitrate in bacon than in plain pork belly to be sure, but there's actually not much of it, and the amounts you need to consume to have a vasoconstrictive effect seems high. Meanwhile: bacon (along with all cured meat and fish) is one of the very saltiest things we eat. Lots of people are salt-sensitive. This is probably what virtually all claims of "Chinese restaurant syndrome" (MSG sensitivity) turned out to be.
You should have no trouble finding pork belly. Try an experiment: just make your own bacon by filling a pan with kosher salt and pushing each side of the pork belly into it until they're all evenly and aggressively covered. Wrap the meat in plastic wrap, dump the pan, and put the meat back in it; leave it in the fridge for 3-4† days. Rinse it off and slice it. See if you get a headache from eating it.
(Home-cured bacon is good but if you don't add some of the carcinogen back to the cure, it's not safe to keep much longer than fresh meat is).
† That's a light cure, but long enough for this experiment, and if you're new to baconing and don't know what to look for, under-cured is better than over.
The big footnote missing from my post is that I'm celiac. I've done a ton of trial and error to find foods that cause me problems. I basically eat chicken (seasoned with salt and pepper) and rice (with butter) everyday. I only drink water and unsweetened vanilla almond milk. My snacks are popcorn and salted potato or corn chips. On this diet I don't get sinus headaches.
No one likes to hear it, but I've isolated monosodium glutamate as a trigger too. It's in a ton of flavored chips that I ate thinking they'd be fine for me.
Give me a month to try this. I'll let you know how it turns out.
You also believe yourself to be sensitive to MSG, but the common thread between the foods that are causing you symptoms might not be a pair of poorly-observed sensitivities, but rather that the foods that trigger you tend to be very salty.
https://www.google.com/search?q=bacon+nutritional+value&rlz=...
Anyway this stuff really doesn't matter. People have been attacking foods since I was a baby. It's nearly always lies. Literally every single thing that you can eat has been attacked as being fattening, cancer causing, or "bad for you" and 99.999999% of the time there is zero science behind it.
For example people to this day claim that aspartame is poisonous even tho it is most definitely not. And now those same people attack Splenda. The fact is none of them know what they're talking about and they're unhappy with their lives so they don't want you enjoying yours. So they attack your foods. This has been going on at least my entire life but probably much longer than that.
Our knowledge of food is super limited. Our medicine is super limited when it comes to auto immune disorders.
My headaches don't exist according to science, but I dealt with them for 23 years and figure out a fix. Keep your mind open a bit, we don't have everything figured out and people's experiences are very real.
You mean your knowledge. The scientific world knows a lot about how food works and what it does to the human body. It could know more, but because our medical research is driven by profit motive instead of "the greater good", food research is low on the totem pole. The interference of corporations such as the subject of this story certainly hasn't helped the situation.
For example, General Mills is probably the most guilty single-party with regards to the diabetes and obesity epidemic, but nobody is holding them responsible. We should be. If corporations and their executive leadership were punished for the terrible things they do to our civilization, they would possibly take care to be more responsible in the future.
I have (had?) fructose malabsorption. I could digest sugar fine, but high fructose foods (HFCS, apples) not so well. My theory is being celiac my body attacked my small intestine and messed up digestion there. It could have been a gut bacteria problem, but I saw that more as a symptom of the underlying disease.
I didn't even mind that part so much. Sinus headaches were killing me. I thought I had brain cancer. Cutting out foods that trigger those has been my quest over the last 5 years and I have a pretty good handle on it now. Apparently chronic sinusitus is common in celiacs and it's pretty understudied. [1]
1. http://www.aaaai.org/ask-the-expert/coeliac-disease-sinusiti...
Confusing I know
Generally: if it tastes like what you expect ham or bacon to taste like, or it looks like what you expect it to look like, it's cured with nitrates. Nitrates have a powerful effect on flavor and color.
So you are saying that even if I got my own raw pork belly from the butcher and learned how to cure it properly with salt, its look and taste would still be inferior to the delicious blocks of bacon I get at any chain grocery store?
You can buy salt cured bacon here: https://shop.bentonscountryham.com/ProductDetails.asp?Produc...
(1) You can look at that price tag and see why it's unlikely to be your go-to bacon,
(2) Last I checked, Benton's used a nitrate cure, and
(3) Seriously, intensely smoked food (Benton's bacon qualifies) is probably going to be more carcinogenic from the smoking compounds than from the cure. Unlike nitrate->N-nitrosamine, we're pretty clear on how smoked food causes gastric cancer.
All of which helps explain why it's so hard to find. :)
There is an ongoing debate over what actually causes the observed cancer increase from eating (some) meats, and which meats it applies to. Some studies suggest the issue is red meat in general, not cured meats; others focus on a more vague "processed meat" category. (This is made even more confusing by the US habit of selling cured meats labelled as "uncured", which was touched on in the article.)
We do know that nitrites can turn into cancer causing chemicals, but we also know that they do so in low quantities, and that a lot of things in our diet contain nitrites. The "cured-labelled-as-uncured" American bacon gets its nitrites from celery, which contains a lot, yet celery doesn't seem to be causing a lot of cancer. There are some vague theories about how "nitrites in plants are special!", but so far, every attempt to study that has shown the reverse as far as I'm aware.
So in my view, the situation is confusing, but there is certainly evidence that bacon causes cancer. What I don't really buy is the idea that it's obviously the nitrites. It's great that parma hams are made without them, but there's no study (nor is there likely to ever be a study) that says "good news, eating parma hams has 0% impact on your risk of cancer". Especially since they probably do give you cancer, if all the studies showing links to red meat are borne out.
But eh. Maybe it does lower your risk. :) But I think if I was worried about it, I'd skip all bacon, given how nonexistent the evidence is to suggest nitrite-free bacon is actually healthy.
It also goes into solid detail on the extent of (1) and (2), neither of which seem particularly groundbreaking.
Also, the results of nitrosamines happen faster than I believe you expect from what you posted. Colon and rectal cancers have been on the rise for decades.
So, I see your point, but it's an uglier problem than I think you realize and there are some easy solutions available.
I haven't eaten meat since Jan 1 of this year as an experiment in blood panel results, body fat, and general "feel" of abandoning meats. I was already mostly dairy free (don't consume animal milks with the exception of purchased baked goods or cheeses - a few times a week at worst) for over 7 years.
If you haven't tried a shift toward a plant based diet, I would argue you have no clue. Because I didn't. Giving meat up is actually easier than things like cheese as an example.
I lost 10lbs of body fat in a month (5'11 @ 175 --> 165) and increased strength in January. I also improved all blood panel markers by a minimum of 15% (WellnessFX). But the best part is the subjective part: overall feel. I feel much better, more consistently and more often on mostly plant based. Things within my pallette have changed quickly.
Dr. Greger's "How Not to Die" has helped in some of the education and all the references to studies relating. Cooking, however is a fundamental shift from Paleo so that is one of the hardest parts you have to focus on right away. I had so many recipes I loved and became frustrated early finding alternatives. However after 2 months I'm enjoying cooking with new foods and techniques. I've picked up about a dozen new cookbooks and have learned a lot in short order.
Overall, again, I feel your statement is unfounded and I'd suggest for those interested in improving their health to try slow shifts to more plants. There's only upside and there are many studies in support of.
The final piece of it is our planet. Animals raised for meat production requires excessive energy and waste. Beyond that most of our meat supply chain is riddled with things such as E Coli (supported in many recent studies - as an example of the many: https://www.asm.org/index.php/mbiosphere/item/6219-connectin...).
TL:DR Don't miss meat after giving it up. Those who say it adds "value" without actually trying don't have basis to support their claim.
Please, speak for yourself. Some of us have enough trouble find a variety of food to eat without such restrictions. It is actually insulting to be told that radically changing my diet as an unintentional lifelong picky eater is some trivial exercise.
Furthermore it is arrogant to judge value so certainly on behalf of strangers. Put frankly, who are you to tell me what I do and don't like?
Did I ever try to tell you what you should like? Nope. Get a grip.
There's also mentions of "slow shifts" and similar, indicating that the change of your diet is not radical and sudden, but gradual and slow.
Picky eaters have a somewhat disease and should try to incorporate variety. Otherwise you risk black swans by eating practically the same thing all your life. Eating many ingredients is antifragile :D
I don't doubt his good intentions and I think he attempts to be balanced and use science to back his arguments. But he clearly starts from the position that meat is bad as I think perhaps you do. And perhaps it is. But I would prefer to see that established without prejudice.
If you have an ethical problem with eating meat then don't eat it. But I get a little tired of people proselytising as a result of becoming born again vegans.
As for curing meat. As you say meat can be dangerous to consumer due to contamination. I would rather a slightly elevated risk of cancer from moderate use of nitrate cured meats than near certain death from botulism or some other nasty. I really would like to see a safer alternative become commercially available but I don't want to be second guessing the microbial safety of my cold cuts. I rarely eat bacon but cold cured meats with salad are a relatively important part of my diet as cooking in our kitchen heats the house too much during the warmer months.
I think the big problem with meat, as with the sugar epidemic, is overconsumption. If every meat eater ate meat in moderation as part of a balanced diet there would be far less environmental impact and animal cruelty than creating a small number of vegan converts. Red meat consumption has certainly dropped in Australia though chicken has offset some of that.
At the risk of belaboring the obvious, you may buy yourself some years with virtuous living, but you are still going to die. It's worth considering whether you want to give up all your small temporal pleasures.
Did I state longevity was my goal? No. "Temporal pleasures" are subjective. And you're conflating your tastes with mine incorrectly. I stated I ate a lot of meat, and enjoyed it. I don't miss it having cut it out. That was very surprising to me and I'm simply sharing thoughts. I also suggested if you haven't tried it, how would you know? You don't. Plain and simple.
You're telling us all this without mentioning what kind of exercise regiment you're on?
Protein? Peas, quinoa, beans, nuts, tempeh, leafy greens, seeds, and the list goes on. The difference is something like quinoa is that, compared to any meat, it is calorie for calorie more nutritionally complete.
Finally why are you focused on protein to begin with? And how much protein is required for you daily? Overconsumption of has shown negative effects:
But this can be fixed by one multivitamin pill, correct?
> Finally why are you focused on protein to begin with?
My belief is that you need certain amount of protein, if you are highly engaged into sport activities. Maybe it is not very educated belief of course.
I hate to break it to you, but your relationship is already over.
"Ever since the “war on nitrates” of the 1970s, US consumers have been more savvy about nitrates than those in Europe, and there is a lot of “nitrate-free bacon” on the market. The trouble, as Jill Pell remarks, is that most of the bacon labelled as nitrate-free in the US “isn’t nitrate-free”. It’s made with nitrates taken from celery extract, which may be natural, but produces exactly the same N-nitroso compounds in the meat. Under EU regulation, this bacon would not be allowed to be labelled “nitrate-free”.
“It’s the worst con I’ve ever seen in my entire life,” says Denis Lynn, the chair of Finnebrogue Artisan, a Northern Irish company that makes sausages for many UK supermarkets, including Marks & Spencer."