For The Love of Food

Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup.

Wow, please don’t skip your reading this week. There are two excellent stories about the dangers of food imports, an exposé on the bogus “nitrate free” food labels and a fascinating tale of finding zen in the kitchen. All that and more on my top 10 food and health links this week.

Want to see all my favorite links? Be sure to follow me on on Digg. I also share links on Twitter (@summertomato) and the Summer Tomato Facebook fan page. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you.

Links of the week

• What’s Inside the Bun? <<Awesome piece about the bogus “nitrate free” claims on some processed meat products. (New York Times)
• China’s Bizarre Food ‘Safety’ Scene, and Our Own <<Another must-read about the horrific crimes going on in the Chinese food supply, and why we aren’t exactly doing much better in the US. (New York Times)
• Banned chemicals found in tons of imported fish <<BS of the week for the lack of adequate regulation, and proof that the above story was not scaremongering. Though I’m horrified by this, I’m not particularly surprised. The government is clearly not doing enough to protect you, so I’d recommend sticking to domestic wild seafood as best you can. (The Tennessean)
• Is Your Meat Habit Giving You Diabetes? <<The title is misleading, but this is actually a fascinating article about the dangers of industrially farmed animals. (Mother Jones)
• Media reports of new hypertension study should be taken with a grain of salt <<The latest salt news is very much in agreement with the discussion we had last week on Salt: How bad is it really? (Spoonful of Medicine)
• Natural, local, processed? What do these labels really mean? <<Nice, simple tutorial on some of the more confusing food labels. (Nutrition Over Easy)
• Eating at restaurants boosts risk of obesity, experts warn <<Umm, yep. Indulge with caution. (Los Angeles Times)
• Restaurant calories – a cautionary tale <<A partial explanation of why the above story about restaurants is true. (Weighty Matters)
• Need more Zen in your life? Learn how to chop <<A benefit of cooking you probably haven’t considered: mental calmness. (The Globe and Mail)
• Sichuan Eggplant <<Eggplant season is starting and this looks delicious. I’d probably leave out the sugar (or at least half it), but that’s just me. (Simply Recipes)

What inspired you this week?

Photo by Daryl Marquardt

People trying to cut calories and refined carbohydrates out of their diet often turn to deli meats as a high protein, low fat alternative. But is this really a good idea?

While refined carbohydrates increase your risk of diabetes and heart disease, so do processed meats including sausage, bacon and deli meats. It is unlikely to be the fat (or even the saturated fat) in these products that do the damage, since processed meats are consistently shown to be more dangerous than saturated fat alone.

In fact, what the food manufacturers replace the fat with often ends up being much more risky.

What’s in them?

Take a quick look at the ingredients of a Louis Rich turkey variety pack:

Smoked White Turkey: White Turkey, Water, Salt, Contains less than 2% of Modified Corn Starch, Sodium Lactate, Sugar, Sodium Phosphates, Sodium Erythorbate (Made From Sugar), Sodium Diacetate, Sodium Nitrite, Garlic Powder.

Smoked Turkey Ham: Turkey Thigh Meat, Water, Contains less than 2% of Salt, Sodium Lactate, Sugar, Sodium Phosphates, Sodium Erythorbate (Made From Sugar), Sodium Diacetate, Sodium Nitrite, Flavor.

Turkey Bologna: Turkey Ingredients (Mechanically Separated Turkey, Turkey), Water, Modified Corn Starch, Contains less than 2% of Salt, Sodium Lactate, Corn Syrup, Dextrose, Flavor, Enzyme Modified Skim Milk, Sodium Phosphates, Sodium Erythorbate (Made From Sugar), Sodium Diacetate, Sodium Nitrite, Extractives of Paprika.

Turkey Cotto Salami: Turkey Ingredients (Turkey, Mechanically Separated Turkey), Water, Turkey Hearts, Contains less than 2% of Salt, Sodium Lactate, Sugar, Sodium Phosphates, Spice, Sodium Erythorbate (Made From Sugar), Garlic Powder, Sodium Diacetate, Sodium Nitrite, Flavor.

What exactly is “flavor”? I’ll let you ponder that one.

These meats are pumped full of starch, sugar, salt, preservatives and other random ingredients. Given the quality of the meat they use (“mechanically separated turkey”?) it’s not hard to understand why. All that added “flavor” is needed to make these products taste like juicy meat again.

The low fat versions are even worse, containing higher amounts sugar and salt to make up for the lack of natural fat flavor.

Why is this bad?

The extra starch and sugar are not good since they are, after all, the processed carbohydrates we want to avoid. However these are still a relatively small contribution to total calories. The bigger issues with processed meats are the added sodium and preservatives.

Processed meats have been associated with increased risk of several cancers, particularly those of the digestive system. It has been suggested that the presence of nitrates and nitrates used in the preservation methods are a potential cause, however the data remains inconclusive. Confusing the matter further is that vegetables are the primary source of nitrates in the human diet and some have suggested that in this context they may be a beneficial nutrient.

Heart disease has also been clearly associated with consumption of processed meat, though the reason for the connection is still unknown.

Then there’s the issue of quality. There are a lot of questionable ingredients in highly-processed deli meats like these from Louis Rich. It is unclear if the health risks are the same whether the meats are cured and preserved with high-quality ingredients (charcuterie vs. standard deli meat) or when the meat is preserved without the use of nitrates and nitrites.

What to do

Though it is difficult to point to the exact reason processed meats are dangerous, there is enough evidence associating them with serious health problems to warrant limiting them in your diet. Most of the studies that found associations with processed meats and cancer considered 5 or more servings a week to be a high dose.

To be on the safe side I recommend limiting your intake of processed meats to less than 4 servings per week.

For alternative snack ideas check out Healthy Snacking 101.