In a word, bacon. While I do my best to eat healthy most of the time, bacon is one of those things that makes everything taste better and I could not bear to live without. And before you tell me to substitute turkey bacon for bacon, turkey bacon is not bacon. They shouldn't even be allowed to write "bacon" on the package. So in an attempt to be at least slightly healthier, I’ve been paying more to buy uncured, natural bacon that’s labeled “no nitrates or nitrites added.”
Nitrite and nitrate are food additives used as preservatives. Nitrite becomes carcinogenic when heated with a protein like bacon. So naturally, I thought paying a little extra for nitrite-free bacon would be worth the health benefit. Not so, according to Cook’s Illustrated. Turns out that bacon labeled “nitrite- or nitrate-free” is brined with celery juice, which contains naturally occurring nitrates that become cancer-causing nitrites in the brining process. What’s more, a lab study revealed that “nitrite-free” bacon actually has nearly twice as many carcinogenic nitrites as regular bacon.
The conclusion? From now on, I’ll be saving the extra money I spent on “natural” bacon for some shrimp to wrap my bacon around.
1 comments:
That's why they have the saying "Everything's better with bacon" - because it's so true! Really, anything is better with bacon wrapped around it - asparagus, meatballs, water chestnuts, corn on the cob, and even my cholesterol-filled heart. Mmm!
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