Red meat doesn’t cause cancer… it’s the sodium nitrite added to processed meats

There is a huge misconception in regards to consumption of red meat and processed meats — that too much can increase your risk of getting cancer. But, says Natural News founder/editor Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, that’s not entirely accurate.

Actually, it’s the sodium nitrite contained in processed meat that presents the biggest danger.

In a recent podcast, Adams says people have once again been lied to by ignoramuses in the so-called “mainstream media,” noting that the chemical is a color-fixer and preservative that is used to make dead meats appear pink and fresh.

Adams was responding to a warning issued by the World Health Organization — and dutifully picked up by a lazy, uncurious media — regarding the processed meat cancer threat that includes bacon, ham, sausage, beef jerky, lunch meats, hams, pizza meats, and others.

“All of these things are made with curing chemicals, usually,” said the Health Ranger — primarily sodium nitrite. “And now the mainstream media is reporting on all of this as if it were new” information.

Adams reminded listeners that he was warning of the dangers of sodium nitrite — that it causes pancreatic cancer, colorectal cancer, leukemia and brain tumors — over a decade ago in a book he wrote around 2004 called “Grocery Warning.” In it, he warned, among other things, about sodium nitrite in processed meats causing cancer.

“In fact, practically everything I warned about in 2004 is being removed” from foods by restaurants, the food industry, and regulators, the Health Ranger added.

“This is just another case where I was a decade ahead of the mainstream media warning about these things,” Adams said, noting that many people heeded those cautions and changed their diets, even though critics — primarily those in the food industry — continued to push their poisons as ‘safe.’

Indeed, Adams has been warning about this for quite some time. In a 2005 column at Natural News, he wrote of a new study that found a 67-percent greater risk of pancreatic cancer risk stemming from the consumption of processed meats:

Consuming processed meats increases the risk of pancreatic cancer, says new research conducted at the University of Hawaii that followed nearly 200,000 men and women for seven years. According to lead study author Ute Nothlings, people who consumed the most processed meats (hot dogs and sausage) showed a 67% increased risk of pancreatic cancer over those who consumed little or no meat products.

However, Adams continued, “researchers failed to accurately identify the culprit responsible” for the increased risk — which “is the widespread use of a carcinogenic precursor ingredient known as sodium nitrite.”

He went on to note that sodium nitrite was on regulators’ radar long before. In the 1970s, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration attempted to ban the substance, “but was preempted by the meat processing industry, which relies on the ingredient as a color fixer to make foods look more visually appealing,” Adams wrote.

In addition to increasing pancreatic risk, Adams, in his book, notes that cases of leukemia rose a whopping 700 percent with regular consumption of hot dogs.

In 2007, Adams wrote on this topic again, noting that “world cancer experts have finally declared” what his readers knew years earlier: “That processed meats cause cancer, and anyone seeking to avoid cancer should avoid eating all processed meats for life.”

Again, in 2010, he wrote of a new study that found regular consumption of processed meats led to a 42-percent increase in the risk of heart disease, and a 19 percent increase in diabetes.

Natural News revisited the topic once more in 2012, reporting on a Swedish study that found just 50 grams per day of processed meat, or the equivalent of one breakfast sausage, boosted pancreatic cancer risk by 19 percent. Doubling the intake to 100 grams per day doubled the risk to 38 percent.

Hear more of Adams’ discussion about the dangers of processed foods and sodium nitrite in particular below.

Sources for this article include:

NaturalNews.com

NewsTarget.com

Science.NaturalNews.com