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The salts of nitrite and nitrate are commonly used for curing meat and other perishable produce. They are also added to meat to keep it red and give flavour, while nitrates are used to prevent certain cheeses from bloating during fermentation.
Scientists are calling for bacon and other processed meats such as chorizo and salami to have a class of chemical additives removed because they are believed to cause an estimated 6,600 cases of bowel cancer in the UK every year.
The culprit is nitrites, which are used during the meat-curing process as a preservative. Crucially, too, they add an alluringly tangy taste and a shopper-seducing fresh-pink hue. But the controversy isn’t just a simple issue of yet another dangerous food additive. The debate is central to our love of consuming cheap, tasty and filling foods, no matter what the possible cost may be to our health.
In 1956, British scientists, Peter Magee and John Barnes, tested the safety of nitrite-type chemicals because they were also being used by dry-cleaners.
Their findings showed nitrites cause liver cancer in rats. By the Seventies, other researchers revealed that repeated nitrite doses at the levels consumed by people who regularly eat bacon caused numerous tumours in animals.
By the mid-Nineties, nitrites were also being associated with human cancers such as brain tumours.
And then, in 2015, World Health Organisation (WHO) scientists classified bacon and other processed meats as a Group One carcinogen. This top-level danger classification meant the world’s leading scientists were convinced nitrites cause cancer and bowel cancer in particular. The WHO warned that eating bacon and other cured meats may cause an extra 34,000 cancer deaths a year worldwide.
Experts warned that merely consuming a daily couple of rashers of bacon or one hotdog again, around 50g would raise the risk of bowel cancer by around a fifth. The medical doctor and science journalist, Michael Mosley, has put it more starkly. He believes that every bacon sandwich you eat knocks half an hour off your life.
The additives react with red meat to form cancer-causing chemicals called N-nitroso compounds. These are reported to damage the cells in the lining of our bowels, and may, indeed, lead to cancer.
Of course, we are exposed to a host of cancer-causing compounds every day of our lives.