"Meat Industry Reaction to New Cancer Guidelines"
What was the meat industry's response to these leading cancer charities
recommendation to stop eating processed meat, like bacon, ham, hot dogs, sausage,
and lunch meat, now considered a Class 1 carcinogen.
They acknowledge that the most recent international cancer prevention
guidelines now urge people to avoid processed meat.
It's evident that "such a statement represents 'a clear and present danger'
for the meat industry," reads one response in the journal, Meat Science.
Processed meat, they say, is a social necessity.
How could anyone live without bologna?
The challenge for the meat industry is to find
a way to maintain the consumption
of these convenience products while somehow not damaging public health.
We're still not sure what it is in processed meat that's so carcinogenic,
but the most probable educated guess for explaining the damaging effect
of processed meats involves heme compounds,
along with nitrosamine and free radical formation,
resulting ultimately in carcinogenic DNA damage.
To reduce nitrosamines they could remove the nitrites,
something that the industry has been considering for decades
because of the long known toxic effects they cause.
The industry adds them to keep the meat pink.
There are, evidently, other coloring additives available.
Nevertheless, it's going to be hard to get their industry to change
in view of the positive effects of these substances as preservatives,
and desirable flavor and red color developing ingredients.
No one wants green eggs and ham. It's like salt reduction in meat products.
They'd like to, but one of the biggest barriers
to salt replacement within the meat industry is cost,
as salt is one of the cheapest food ingredients available.
Now there's a number of taste enhancers they can inject into the meat that can help
compensate for the salt reduction, but some leave a bitter after-taste,
so they can also inject a patented bitter blocking chemical that can prevent
taste nerve stimulation at the same time, the first of what may become a stream
of products that are produced due to the convergence
of food technology and biotech.
Or they could always try adding non-meat materials to the meat.
You could add fiber,
or resistant starch from beans that have protective effects against cancer.
After all, in the United States dietary fiber is under-consumed by most adults,
indicating that fiber fortification in meat products could have health benefits —
failing to note, of course, that their products are one of the reasons
the American diet is so deficient in fiber in the first place.
The industry is all in favor of reformulating their products
to cause less cancer, but obviously any such optimization
has to achieve a healthier product without affecting the hedonic aspects.
It's important to realize that nutritional and technological quality
in the meat industry are inversely related.
An improvement in one will lead to a deterioration of the other.
They know that consumption of lard is not the best thing in the world,
heart disease being our number one killer and all.
However, those downsides are in sharp contrast to their technological qualities
that make them indispensable in the manufacture of meat products.
Otherwise you just don't get the same lard consistency.
The pig's fat just doesn't get hard enough, and as a result a fatty smear
upon cutting or slicing can be observed on the cutting surface of the knife.
So, yeah, less heart disease, but you've got to weigh the pros and cons.