Processed Meats, Dietary Dangers
Dr. Michael Cutler | Feb 06, 2012 | Comments 13
The evidence keeps mounting: Feasting on fast food means a bigger risk of a fast, short life. Research shows that processed meats in particular often seem to speed the process of physiological deterioration. A hot dog may be an easy, quick meal, but it’s hard on your health.
Processed Meats
Processed meats usually contain preservatives. The category includes: corned beef, packaged luncheon meats, canned frozen hams, hot dogs, bacon, sausage, meat pies, deli sticks, fried chicken strips and fast food chicken sandwiches. In contrast, cleaner meats such as free-range chicken, grass-fed beef and mercury-free salmon appear to be much healthier meal choices. Scientific literature backs this up.
A 2005 study conducted at the University of Hawaii followed 190,545 multiethnic participants for an average of seven years and was published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.1 The scientists evaluated the diets, smoking habits, family histories of pancreatic cancer and ethnicity in this group and found that those who ate the most processed meat had a 67 percent increased risk of developing the deadliest cancer of all — pancreatic cancer — in comparison to those who had the lowest processed meat intake. It is thought that the chemical reactions that occur during processing fill the meat with carcinogenic chemicals like heterocyclic amines or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.
In addition to increased rates of pancreatic cancer, leukemia is reported to have increased by 700 percent following a time of high hot dog consumption in a 1982 study population reported in the Journal of Cancer Research.2 Since processed meats are not prepared from grass-fed animals or free-range fowl, they are likely to have residues of hormones, antibiotics and environmental pollutants.
Heart Disease Risk
The authors of a December 2010 report in Cardiology Research and Practice constructed a meta-analysis of data from all over the world that showed a direct relationship between the consumption of processed meats and the risk of heart disease and diabetes. After adjusting for heart disease risk factors already found in their study subjects, they discovered that the risk of cardiovascular disease increased by 42 percent for every 50 gram serving (e.g. one hot dog) of processed meat consumed daily. In addition, the risk of diabetes increased by 19 percent for those who consumed the equivalent of one hot dog per day. The researchers found that the cholesterol and saturated content of both processed and unprocessed meat was nearly the same. Processed meats have on average four times more salt and 50 percent more nitrate preservatives. The salt and nitrite content could be making the difference in heart disease and diabetes rates, not the fat content; nitrite preservatives are known to raise coronary heart disease (CHD) and diabetes risk.3
Red Meat And Processed Meat
In an analysis of this study, the researchers observe that processed meat consumption raises disease risk compared to no consumption of processed meat. They didn’t compare the disease risk of eating processed meats to the risk connected with unprocessed meats. Yet there is other, further research exploring the relationship between white, red and processed meat. For instance, a 2009 study of about 500,000 middle-aged people in the NIH-AARP Diet & Health Study (reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine4) found that processed and red meats increased total deaths, cancer and cardiovascular disease (CVD) deaths compared to white meats. White meat, in this research, apparently protected against death from all causes:
- For increasing death from all causes, red meat (31 percent increase in men and 35 percent increase in women) produced a greater risk than processed meats of all types (15 percent in men and 25 percent in women).
- For increasing death from cancer, red meat (27 percent increase in men and 50 percent increase in women) produced a greater risk than processed meats of all kinds (only 12 percent increase in men and 11 percent in women).
- For increasing death from heart disease, red meat (27 percent increase in men and 50 percent in women) again produced a greater risk than the processed meats (9 percent increase in men and 38 percent increase in women).
Fish Research
Fish such as salmon, sardines and tuna produced much more favorable health effects than red meat and processed meats. This may stem from the fact that fish is a very good source of omega-3 fatty acids (known to lower the risk for atherosclerosis, high triglyceride level and high blood pressure). However, fish is more beneficial if it is mercury-free and not fried. A 2009 study published in Circulation5 reported that, in men, those who ate the most fish (baked or boiled) decreased their coronary heart disease by 23 percent as a whole. Those who ate deep-fried, salted and dried fish daily increased their heart disease death rate by up to 15 percent.
Eggs
Studies on egg consumption are a bit more mixed in their results. In 1982, a look at 912 people taking part in the Framingham Heart Study concluded that egg consumption was not related to blood cholesterol levels or to rates of new heart disease.6 This was reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. However, in 1999, findings7 from the Health Professionals Study and Nurses’ Health Study found that even though there was no link between egg consumption of one to six eggs weekly and coronary heart disease or stroke risk in men and women, they did find a significantly increased risk of heart disease in diabetic men by 1.5 to twofold who consumed more than one egg daily (compared to men eating less than one egg per week). A 2008 study8 of 21,327 participants over a 20-year period also reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition concluded essentially the same thing: If you are diabetic, eating large numbers of eggs is harmful.
To your best health,
Michael Cutler, M.D.
Author, Easy Health Options
1 Nothlings U, Wilkens LR, Murphy SP, Hankin JH, Henderson BE, Kolonel LN. Meat and fat intake as risk factors for pancreatic cancer: the multiethnic cohort study. J Natl Cancer Inst. 2005 Oct 5;97(19):1458-65.
2 Preston-Martin, S. et al. N-nitroso compounds and childhood brain tumors: A case-control study. Cancer Res. 1982; 42:5240-5
3 Micha R, Wallace SK, Mozaffarian D. Red and processed meat consumption and risk of incident coronary heart disease, stroke, and diabetes mellitus: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Circulation. 2010;121(21):2271–2283.
4 Sinha R, Cross AJ, Graubard BI, Leitzmann MF, Schatzkin A. Meat intake and mortality: a prospective study of over half a million people. Archives of Internal Medicine. 2009;169(6):562–571.
5 Meng L, Wilkens L, Kolonel L. Fish consumption and ethnic differences in coronary heart disease mortality in a multiethnic cohort. Circulation. 2009;120:p. S498, abstract 1404.
6 Dawber TR, Nickerson RJ, Brand FN, Pool J. Eggs, serum cholesterol, and coronary heart disease. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 1982;36(4):617–625.
7 Hu FB, Stampfer MJ, Rimm EB, et al. A prospective study of egg consumption and risk of cardiovascular disease in men and women. Journal of the American Medical Association. 1999;281(15):1387–1394.
8 Djoussé L, Gaziano JM. Egg consumption in relation to cardiovascular disease and mortality: the Physicians’ Health Study. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 2008;87(4):964–969.
Filed Under: Alternative Medicine • Easy Health Digest™ • General Health
If you are diabetic, eating large numbers of eggs is harmful. Which diabetics and why?
You didn’t specify Type one or type two. To those of us with Type 1 (Juvenile onset, destruction of the beta cells by the immune system) in our families, as opposed to type 2 diabetics (over weight and sedentary, can be be controlled or eliminated) get real tired of the term “diabetics”. Type 2 diabetics won’t be dead in a week without their medication. Type 1 will without insulin. To be type 1 doesn’t mean you abused food or sat in your barcolounger watching soap operas.
While you imply that type 2 diabetics “abused food or sat in your barcolounger…” that is an overly simplistic view of the disease. Yes, many people who never exercise and over-eat may experience an increased risk of type 2 diabetes. However, the disease is more complex than that. You can be a dedicated exerciser and watch your diet and still develop this problem. Many other factors are at work.
Perhaps it’s the manner in which these products are obtained that makes them not healthy, instead of the products themselves. The best way to reverse type 2 diabetes, is by eating exactly these foods (except for processed food, etc) : eggs, meat, poultry and anything that’s wholesome and unrefined. Raising livestock in pure filth is what makes them unsafe for consumption and can cause a list of health problems, but livestock that is humanely raised, is much safer and considerabley healthier since they now contain all of the nutrition that we need.
I think everyone knows that processed foods are not very good for us, but to put the blame on other wholesome foods that we’ve been eating for millenias is not the way to go.
Processed food even look SICKENING and turn off my appetite.
I read the article and was impressed till I read the information as there was little information as to the type of meats being used. If you buy cheap meats which many older people do. Then all meats are processed to some extent. If you go to most the major food chains today all meat has stabilisers and colouring. Since many people are unaware of the processing going into everything from colour enhancers they are going to say their meats were unprocessed. All feed lot animals are kept on hormones and drugs to keep alive to slaughter. Rare will there be a survey truly done with unprocessed meats as there is no such thing any more. Almost all grains are geneticly modified. Animals are fed this then put in a feed lot situation till slaughter. Even by most organic farms. The last few weeks before slaughter the animal is put into a lot and fed with fillers and then food is without the last 24 hours before processing. No one doing these surveys seems to realise the proper management and care that does go into the food supply. Rare is there an untreated, medicated meat unless you raised and slaughtered it yourself. So your results are already off before you start. All animals that will be used for food is WORMED, VETTED in a small way. Or the animal will prove unthrifty and not be used for meat but disposed of.
OOOPs! confusing. I messed up.
Here is what it should read at the last part:
In the homestead organic situation, the last few weeks before slaughter the animal is put into a lot and fed with fillers and then goes without food the last 24 hours before processing.
No one doing these surveys seems to realise the proper management and care that does go into the food supply. Rare is there an untreated, unmedicated meat unless you raised and slaughtered it yourself. So your results are already off before you start. Rare is there really a local meats since much the US meat supply comes from South America now. So it can be raised under different guidelines than US allows.
All animals that will be used for food is WORMED, VETTED in a small way. Or the animal will prove unthrifty and not be used for meat but disposed of. Our food supply is tainted and skewed before start. No matter your results if your foundation is on a non existent foundation or assumption. How can you say this is a valid study?
You can tell if your beef has been grass fed and not feedlotted by the color of the fat. Grass fed beef has yellow fat. However, most consumers are used to white fat, which is obtained by putting the cattle into a feedlot and feeding them grain. Cattle have 3 stomachs that can hold a lot of food, so withholding food for a couple of days, allows them to go through and chew up all the roughage that’s stored there. If they slaughtered cattle on full stomachs, that would be a whole lot of food matter/waste ending up on the killing floor.
My father got juvenile diabetes 2 years after insulin was discovered. Doctors said he wouldn’t live to be an old man. Died at 86 and would likely have lived longer, but he was lost without my mother who died 3 years earlier and started eating more sugars, something he’d never done before. However, his whole life he ate at least one egg a day, poured bacon fat over his potatoes, ate cheese for lunch every day, used canned milk, and was never overweight. He died in 1988. In the past, cattle, chickens and pigs weren’t fed the medications and hormones they are now, and foods didn’t have the preservatives in them they do now. Countries that used to reuse their burial plots after 20 years can no longer do so because the bodies are so full of preservatives they don’t decompose. Kind of makes you think, doesn’t it?
Have you nnoticed the large amount of hogwash regarding frood in the last 20 years? everyone does a study, nothing is conclusive. It’s all conjecture. Everything in moderation. Variety in all things.
Tell Pat that type 2 diabetics have not all sat on fat buns and watched TV while eating junk. Some, while following a diabetic diet because it’s good for you, contracted type 2 because they stupidly took pharmaceuticals, trustingly. The list of diabetogenic drugs is as long as your arm. Should be a lesson to all.
tchofclas states “Countries that used to reuse their burial plots after 20 years can no longer do so because the bodies are so full of preservatives they don’t decompose. Kind of makes you think, doesn’t it”?
The reason the bodies buried don’t decompose as they did decades ago is not due to perseratives in their food, but due to the air and water tight coffins and vaults.Primarily however, it’s the heavy use of embalming fluid, which in the last 30 years has become so totally infused in the body, including even the smallest vessels of the corpse, that decomposition is slowed dramatically. Food perservatives,as bad as they are, are basically totally eliminated during urination and bowel movements. The residual preservatives are usually less than 30-40 grams at anytime….dead or alive.There are reports of bodies buried almost a hundred years being in almost pristine condition when exhumed. Even during the “wild west” period, embalming fluid was used in huge quantities.
Heart disease
Some alternative medicine practitioners[who?] administer chelating agents, usually EDTA, to patients with atherosclerosis. The use of EDTA chelation therapy as a treatment for coronary artery disease has not been shown to be effective and is not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).[1] Several possible mechanisms have been proposed, though none have been scientifically validated. The US National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine began conducting the Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy (TACT) in 2003.[13] Patient enrollment was to be completed around July 2009[5] with final completion around July 2010,[16] but enrollment in the trial was suspended on September 26, 2008 for an investigation by OHRP after complaints about ethical concerns such as inadequate informed consent.[17] The trial has been criticized for lacking prior Phase I and II studies, and particularly because previous controlled trials have not indicated benefits.[15] The American College for Advancement in Medicine, a controversial organization created to promote chelation therapy, has played a part in the adoption of the TACT clinical trial, which has led to further criticism of the trial.[15] Atwood et al. have argued that methodological flaws and lack of prior probability make this trial “unethical, dangerous, pointless, and wasteful.”[15]
The American Heart Association states that there is “no scientific evidence to demonstrate any benefit from this form of therapy” and that the “United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the American College of Cardiology all agree with the American Heart Association” that “there have been no adequate, controlled, published scientific studies using currently approved scientific methodology to support this therapy for cardiovascular disease.”[1] Like other scientific commentators, they note that any improvement among heart patients undergoing chelation therapy can be attributed to the placebo effect and lifestyle changes discovered in conventional medicine but recommended by chelationists; “quitting smoking, losing weight, eating more fruits and vegetables, avoiding foods high in saturated fats and exercising regularly”.[18] They note their concern that patients could put off proven treatments for heart disease like drugs or surgery.[18] A 2005 systematic review found that controlled scientific studies did not support chelation therapy for heart disease.[19] It found that very small trials and uncontrolled descriptive studies have reported benefits while larger controlled studies have found results no better than placebo. The Mayo Clinic states that ‘chelation studies have found that chelation didn’t work as a heart disease treatment.’[20]
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