“A hot dog a day could send you to an early grave,” says PCRM nutrition education director Susan Levin, M.S., R.D. “Processed meats like hot dogs can increase your risk for diabetes, heart disease, and various types of cancer.”
According to The Cancer Project:
An NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study found that processed red meat was associated with a 10 percent increased risk of prostate cancer with every 10 grams of increased intake. A study in Taiwan showed that consumption of cured and smoked meat can increase children’s risk for leukemia. A study in Australia found that women’s risk for ovarian cancer increased as a result of eating processed meats.
The problem with hot dogs and other processed meats are the nitrates. They are what’s linked with cancer. Nitrates give hot dogs and bacon and other such processed meats their distinctive flavor and also kill bacteria. Even organic can’t save you here. The New York Times reports:
A study published earlier this year in The Journal of Food Protection found that natural hot dogs had anywhere from one-half to 10 times the amount of nitrite that conventional hot dogs contained. Natural bacon had from about a third as much nitrite as a conventional brand to more than twice as much.
Well, what can you do? Giving it up is probably the best option. It sounds nearly as bad for you as smoking.
In this spirit, don’t forget to enter to win a DVD copy of Forks over Knives by visiting the original post for the giveaway. Forks over Knives traces the personal journeys of a pair of pioneering researchers, Dr. T. Colin Campbell and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn as their independent research and discoveries lead them to the same startling conclusion: degenerative diseases like heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and even several forms of cancer, could almost always be prevented – and in many cases reversed – by adopting a whole foods, plant-based diet.
Source: Planet Green
Photo credit: PCRM
