Name that Ingredient!! Part 4

As promised, I'm back to talking about food additives. The ingredient I'll be discussing today is one I have always heard my mother, an ARNP, warn me about consuming too often.

When I was a kid, I loved hot dogs, sausage, baloney, bacon, and a host of other salty, highly processed meats. The only time I really got to eat them, however, was when I was staying at a friend or family member's home because my mother was worried about a harmful ingredient common to all of these foods: sodium nitrate.

According to a CNN.com report, the sodium nitrate used in hotdogs, sausage, baloney, bacon, smoked or cured fish, including salmon, and in other meat-curing preparations, has huge cancer-causing potential.  Sodium nitrate is usually included in foods because, in addition to being a dye, it acts as a preservative that can prevent botulism (a kind of food poisoning). The problem is that once sodium nitrate is ingested and mixes with chemicals in the stomach, it allows nitrosamine to form. According to the CNN.com report mentioned above, nitrosamine is highly carcinogenic.

So there we have it: avoid meats cured with sodium nitrate and your mother is usually right.

Happy Eating!

Shalencia

Information found at: http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/indepth.food/additives/table.html