Those of you who know me even a little bit know of my love affair with bacon. As a matter of fact, it’s a good thing bacon is Paleo, because that would be the one thing I’d have a hard time giving up for the cause. At this point in my life, I definitely eat enough of it to make any diehard vegan never want to come near me again for fear of contamination by association. Lately, my favorite thing to do is cut it up into small pieces, cook until nice and crispy (but still springy!), throw some eggs in, a little salsa on top, and voilá! A perfect, filling meal in just a few minutes. Every now and again, I’ll spice it up with some onions and bell peppers, but it really just depends on what’s on hand at the time. As an aside, I don’t know whether or not you guys know this, but store bought salsa is Whole 30 compliant! You just have to make sure there’s no added sugar in it. Just pick up a jar of Pace and you’ve got some extra veggies added to your next meal in seconds. If you were already in on that little secret, I apologize for stating the obvious, but it totally made me feel like I had found a sunken treasure chest when I saw the nutrition label for myself! Ahh, the small things in life… But back to the bacon. If you’ve participated in a Paleo challenge, as I’m assuming most of you who are reading this have or are planning to do, you’ve probably heard it recommended that you ought to avoid bacon that contains nitrates. Some of you might just say “avoid nitrates, no problem” and move on with your lives never thinking of it again, and that’s perfectly fine. But some of you may have that nagging voice in your head saying things like, “What are nitrates anyway? Should I avoid them just because some lady said I should? Are they actually bad for me?” I’d like to help you make some sense of the issues surrounding nitrate consumption as best as I can and I’ve pulled from some really great sources that you can access below if you’d like more info. Let’s start by tackling the first question as to what nitrates are to begin with. I understand not everyone is a chemistry nerd, so I’ll refrain from putting up chemical structures and reaction mechanisms and going through all of that (you’re welcome). If you’ve taken OCHEM or biochemistry and started having PTSD flashbacks, come on back to reality and breathe a deep sigh of relief. We’ll just take the shortcut today. The relevance of nitrates for us is that they are compounds that are put in many commercial meats as a preservative. They keep it looking nice and pink, give it flavor, and prevent harmful microbial growth (Would anyone like a side of botulism with your bacon and eggs?). So should you avoid them and if so, why? For a long time, nitrates have been believed to be the cause of many types of digestive cancers, but in reality, there is not sufficient evidence available to truly validate that claim, in part because a lot of the findings have come from in vitro studies only. Also, nitrites have been shown to negatively impact the transport of oxygen in the blood. But nitrates and nitrites themselves are only a problem indirectly. What we’re typically talking about when we get into the negative side of things are byproducts called nitrosamines. Let’s back up for just a quick second. When you eat nitrATES, you’ve got a whole community of symbiotic bacteria on the back of the tongue that take them in and convert them into nitrITES. Nitrosamines themselves can be formed in a couple of different ways from nitrites and amino acids (think MEAT!), either in an acidic environment or at high temperatures. So that means either in your stomach or during the cooking process. It seems like we can’t win for losing here! Thankfully, there are limits on the amounts of nitrates and nitrites allowed in food and a nifty little way of preventing those conversions. It turns out that vitamins C and E are an effective safeguard against nitrosamine formation, and government regulations also require that a certain amount be added to nitrate-containing meats for just that purpose. And you thought the government never did anything good... There have also been recent studies that suggest nitrates and nitrites are actually pretty good to have, very good in fact. Just a little FYI, vegetables are absolutely LOADED with them, so if nitrites are really all that bad for us, why are vegetables ok to eat? Well, along with nitrites, veggies also contain a lot of antioxidants (especially the green leafy varieties) that have been shown to counteract the negative effects of nitrites, i.e. prevents nitrosamines from being formed in the first place. Remember how we talked about those nice little bacteria in our mouths that convert nitrate to nitrite just a second ago? There’s another side of the story we didn’t talk about. Sure, nitrites can be converted to nasty nitrosamines in the stomach, but they can also take another route and become nitric oxide (NO), which is great for people with cardiovascular disease because it actually lowers blood pressure. If that vein in the middle of your forehead is popping out from all of this, calm down and grab a big bowl of spinach, this is good news. Now does all of this mean you shouldn’t be discerning when it comes to your meat? Of course not. Whenever possible, you should always go for quality. All this implies is that perhaps nitrates may not be the super-villains of processed food we once thought they were. From the available research, it sounds like even though nitrates themselves aren’t bad for you, you’d still probably do much better to get most of them from your veggies. Just a little food for thought. I’m still not done talking about bacon, so stay tuned for Part 2 coming next week!
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