Revival Meats

For some time now, I’ve not really known what to think about the big controversy in cured meats—the one revolving around nitrates/nitrites that are often used during the preservation process.  A lot of information that turns up in Google searches is not only difficult to sift through, but without doing a significant amount of homework, the task of determining what data is legitimate and what is more agenda-driven can seem impossibly complicated for a layman like myself to understand.  Fortunately for all of Houston (and whoever outside of our fine City chooses to follow this li’l blog), we have one man in particular that we hold in the highest esteem for his ability to pour through scientific journals and studies in search of unbiased answers based in scientific fact, and then explain it in a manner that we (I) can understand.  That man of course is known to many of us as Dr. Ricky.    People have summed up Dr. Ricky best by describing him as Houston’s own Harold McGee.  With that in mind, I felt that there was not a better person to dive into the hot topic of of these preservatives and how they may OR may not effect our bodies, than Dr. Ricky.  Most of the time, Dr. Ricky’s food-related writings can be found on his blog, Dude, you going to eat that?, but today, after a serious amount of begging, he has graced the Revival Meats blog with a fascinating guest-post.  Fortunately for us all, we now have his take on the story.

From Dr. Ricky:

I’ll start with a simple adage: every substance is a poison, a drug and a food, depending on amount and circumstance.

Very often, when a chemical is described as being potentially deleterious to human health, be it nicotine, or aspartame, or MSG, only the identity of the substance is discussed; excluding the issue of quantity and circumstance, however, leaves it meaningless.

Notably, that is the case of the often demonized nitrates/nitrites. Used in the course of making salumi, bacon and other cured meats, nitrates and nitrites (often added in the form of sodium salts) to retard the growth of potentially dangerous bacteria, and improve the flavor, color and texture of the meat. Since this extends the shelf life of the item, they are indeed, preservatives, and inherit all the bad propaganda attached to that word.

Cured meats that don’t use nitrites are out there, and they either are misleading, choosing to use nitrate rich celery juice instead of chemically pure sodium nitrate, or roundly panned for not tasting right. But is there any credence to the idea that nitrates/nitrites are “bad for you”? Let’s return to the old adage: it depends on the amount and circumstance. First, let’s understand the difference between the two: nitrate is an ion comprised of a nitrogen atom and three oxygen atoms. Nitrite is a similar ion, but with only two oxygen atoms. However, humans lack the enzymes to directly metabolize nitrate; on its own, nitrate eventually leaves the human body through excretion and dilution. In reality, we are colonized by ten times as many bacterial cells as human cells, and our bacterial cohorts can reduce nitrate into nitrite, which is metabolically relevant. In fact, essential – it’s used to make an important signaling molecule, nitrogen oxide.

Speculation has been rife about the ability of nitrites, when heated, to form potentially toxic nitrosamines – for example, as in frying bacon. In controlled conditions, except in rather extreme cases, this has never panned out to generating enough nitrosamines to be reproducibly toxic. A more recent paper described a link between nitrates/nitrites with heart disease; the subsequent rebuttal points out that the study was flawed because it linked individuals who ate a lot more cured meats to heart disease, assuming that the active component was nitrates/nitrites, when, in fact, it could just as easily be an increased consumption of meat itself that is more correlated (a conclusion in line with multiple other studies).

The vast majority of nitrate sources in the average diet come from fruits and vegetables (hence, the use of celery juice for curing meats) – yet all the reproducible nutritional studies point to increased vegetable consumption as a healthy practice.

Truth is, using sodium nitrite as a curing agent in the amounts conventionally used isn’t proven to be deleterious. Now, increased consumption of meat, that’s a different story.

*Dr. Ricky is also an avid user of Twitter. Follow @drricky

February 25th, 2010 | Charcuterie, Cooking, Cooking Techniques, Cured Meats, Houston, Nitrates, Nitrites, Rants | 4 Comments »