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The Health Menace Inside Your Sandwich

The deli meat in your turkey sandwich is the latest public-health villain...

Behind the decisions is a growing body of research that links processed meats such as sliced ham, bacon and sausage to a range of health problems, including heart disease, stroke, Type 2 diabetes, certain types of cancer and dementia. The findings have governments and many doctors pushing people to eat less processed meat and urging food companies to make healthier products. Processed meats are one of a number of foods—from sandwiches to chocolate milk—drawing scrutiny from doctors and nutritionists as Americans’ poor dietary habits contribute to a host of health problems.

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Articles of Interest

What is Processed Meat & What Meats are Processed?

Processed meats are classified as group 1 carcinogens and connected to a variety of diseases. Explore why and if there is a safe amount to consume.

Are all processed meats equally bad for health?

Eating too much bacon, sausages, hot dogs, canned meat, or lunch meat—meat that has been processed in some way to preserve or flavor it—is bad for health, according to experts. A number of studies have found links between processed meat and various forms of cancer, as well as heart disease and diabetes. But experts quoted in a June 30, 2019 NBC News article noted that it’s not clear what amount of processed meat is safe and whether the type of processed meat makes a difference in terms of risk. For instance, studies don’t differentiate between red processed meat and white processed meat, like turkey or chicken, or between meat with nitrates and nitrate-free meat.

Are Processed Red Meats More Unhealthy than Other Red Meats? What About Other Processed Foods?

When comparing red meats with processed meats, there are some key nutritional differences. While levels of saturated fats and cholesterol are usually similar in processed and unprocessed meats, processed meats generally have four times the amount of sodium and 50% more preservatives than red meats.

Are Some Processed Meats Worse for You Than Others?

Hot dogs and baseball games. Bacon and Sunday mornings. Bratwurst and barbecues. American culture is steeped in joyous occasions featuring processed meats, but when that indulgence extends beyond the occasional celebration, experts say that you should cut back.

Cured vs. Uncured Meat Explained: How Meat Is Preserved

Contrary to its name, uncured meat is still cured, only this process occurs with the help of curing agents derived from celery powder, celery juice, sea salt, and beet extracts rather than artificial preservatives. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) requires companies to label preserved meats as “uncured” and “no nitrates or nitrites added” if they use natural nitrate or nitrite sources.

Duped In The Deli Aisle? 'No Nitrates Added' Labels Are Often Misleading

"There is little evidence that preserving meats using celery ... is any healthier than other added nitrites," says Dariush Mozaffarian, dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. A body of evidence suggests that processed meats are linked to elevated cancer risk. Experts think part of the problem is the nitrites used to cure them. "All nitrites can be converted in the food, during cooking, or in the body to nitrosamines, which are carcinogenic," Mozaffarian explains.

How Spam became one of the most iconic American brands of all time

Spam isn’t exactly the most exciting product. The original recipe included chopped pork shoulder meat with ham, salt, water, sugar and sodium nitrite. (This remained unchanged until 2009, when Hormel added potato starch in an effort to eliminate one of the product’s less attractive features: the gelatin layer created by the cooking process.) At the time it was introduced, it was the only canned meat product on the market that needed no refrigeration. This feature gave Spam a significant competitive advantage.

Processed And Red Meat Could Cause Cancer? Your Questions Answered

Processed meats — yes, hot dogs, plus sausage, ham, even turkey bacon — are cancer-causing, a committee of scientists with WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer concluded. And it classified red meat as "probably carcinogenic to humans."

Processed Meat May Play a Part in Early Death: Study

Grilled hot dogs and sausages may be tasty treats at ball games and picnics, but a new study of nearly 450,000 people finds that eating too much processed meat might shave years off your life. Those who ate the most processed meat increased their risk of dying early by 44 percent. In broader terms, if people ate less processed meat, the number of premature deaths overall would drop by almost 3 percent, Swiss researchers reported.

Processed Meat: What’s in It and Why Is It Bad for You?

Determining whether there are some processed meats that are worse than others is a difficult question, as most research in this area lumps all processed meats together and does not differentiate between hot dogs and chicken nuggets, for example. Though you might think that eating processed chicken and fish products would be better for you than eating processed red meats, this is not necessarily the case. Many of the downsides of consuming processed meats are derived from the processing itself and the addition of preservatives and other substances, rather than the original animal product and its nutritional qualities.

Processed Red Meat Is Linked to a Higher Risk of Dementia

Processed red meats—like bacon, deli meats, and hot dogs—are linked to a host of health ills. Now, the latest study finds that eating too much red meat may even harm the brain. In a study published in the journal Neurology, Dr. Daniel Wang, an assistant professor of medicine at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and his team report that people who eat more processed red meat had a 14% higher risk of developing dementia over more than four decades that those who consumed minimal amounts.

Processed red meat isn’t just bad for your heart, it’s also associated with dementia

Less red meat is good for the planet and a growing number of people have started the new year resolving to pursue a meat-free diet. Besides being good for the planet and kinder to animals, eating less red meat is also better for your health. Reducing consumption of red and processed meat could reduce your risk of diabetes, cancer and heart disease. These diseases share risk factors with dementia, including the most common type, Alzheimer’s disease

Should I worry about how much processed meat I eat?

To unpack this a bit, nitrates and nitrites are two different compounds that occur in a lot of foods. Nitrates are typically found in whole plant foods such as beetroot and leafy greens – but are broken down into nitrites by bacteria in the mouth. What may make a difference is that nitrate-rich foods are also full of protective polyphenols and fibre; nitrites that occur in processed meat don’t have these, and one recent large-scale US study pointed to this as a key factor in their effects on health. In the absence of further research about exactly which processed meats are the worst, the best advice is to lower your intake overall: the NHS recommends that you keep to under 70 grams a day. The odd bit of pepperoni on a pizza, or a slice of salami won’t cause your risk to skyrocket, so keep your diet mostly plant-based, with meat as an occasional treat. And try to keep it free-range where you can because it is probably better for you, as well as the animals.

Should Meat Come with Cancer Warning Labels?

Put down that beef jerky for a second. Last year the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classified processed meats as possible carcinogens, saying that consumption of 50 grams of processed meat every day increases the risk of colorectal cancer by almost 20 percent.

So, About That Study That Linked Processed Meats to Mania...

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What’s the difference between cured and uncured meats?

Nitrites check a lot of boxes when making meat safe, delicious and visually appealing. They help to inhibit the growth of bacteria, provide a visually pleasing pink color to the meat and they add a certain salty/meaty flavor for which products such as hot dogs, bacon, and sausage are known. Though scientists have been studying nitrites and nitrates in human health for many years, a figurative bomb dropped in 2015 when the World Health Organization released a report linking nitrite- and nitrate-cured meats to cancer and recommending people limit their intake (this is the same report that famously linked eating red meat to cancer, but that’s a different story).

World Health Organization: Processed Meats Such as Hot Dogs and Bacon Cause Cancer

The research "assessed more than 800 epidemiological studies that investigated the association of cancer with consumption of red meat or processed meat in many countries, from several continents, with diverse ethnicities and diets," according to the study. One important thing to note: "The largest body of epidemiological data concerned colorectal cancer.... Positive associations were seen with high versus low consumption of red meat in half of those studies."

Resources

Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine

The World Health Organization has determined that processed meat is a major contributor to colorectal cancer, classifying it as “carcinogenic to humans.” Just one hot dog or a few strips of bacon consumed daily increases cancer risk by 18%.