Nitrites & Nitrates are NOT bad for you!

The French agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety (ANSES) recently made a statement that we should reduce our consumption of nitrite and nitrate containing foods to a maximum of 150g per week. Nitrate containing foods include all processed meats like deli ham, hot dogs, bacon and turkey. They say “Concerning nitrites, over half of our exposure is related to the consumption of delicatessen meat due to the nitrite additives used to prepare it.” 

Part of my work as a naturopath and nutritionist specialising in oncology is to uncover truths and myths, to help people get access to information that serves their best health and that is what this article is precisely about. 

Nitrites are used as  a preservative in cooked meats generally.  You would be forgiven for thinking that nitrites in bacon are bad for you. Our supermarket shelves stock ‘Nitrate Free’ Bacon and Ham like it’s a selling point and you pay more for it too. We have been told for decades now by various heart health authorities that bacon is bad for us because it has artery clogging saturated fat (you need saturated fat actually but I wrote about that in another article) and it’s full of nitrates and nitrites which will have your friends and well-meaning loved ones telling you that you are asking for a heart attack by so much as even looking at a packet of bacon on the shelf. 

When we think about what we have been told about heart disease and how that works, we think about all the fats we eat floating around in our arteries, bunching up and causing obstructions which eventually kill us. It doesn’t work like that though. In fact the damage done to the sides of your arteries is done by sugar and if you do suffer with high cholesterol, it’s not eggs you need to give up, or bacon for that matter, it’s bread, pasta, cake, sugar in your tea, biscuits and those sweet treats, it’s actually fructose that is incredibly being shown to cause the damage. (Tokita et al, 2005) (Bray G A, 2012). 

Nitrates are a naturally occurring substance. They are present in many vegetables, especially in beets, spinach and pomegranate but you might be surprised to know that the largest amount of nitrates/nitrite exposure doesn’t come from outside the body (exogenous) you body actually makes it (endogenous). Yep, you heard that right!  You produce between 70-90% of all the nitrites in your body, in your saliva.  Maybe we all need to stop swallowing just to avoid it?  It seems that ANSES (above)  don’t have it quite right then, according to the latest research. 

It’s pretty amazing to learn that 1 serving of rocket or 2 servings of butter lettuce or 4 servings of celery or beetroot each contain more nitrates than 467 servings of hot dogs (Swarc S, 2008) It’s even more amazing to learn that nitrates and nitrites are beneficial for our cardiovascular and immune systems. In hot dogs, the pink colour comes from Nitrites being converted into Nitric Oxide which binds to the iron present, giving it the pink colour. Nitric oxide is what we call a vasodilator and this means that it relaxes the smooth walls of your arteries, allowing blood to flow freely around the body, lowering blood pressure. Nitrites are now being investigated for their beneficial role in high blood pressure (as above), heart attacks and other circulatory health problems. They are definitely not something to fear and certainly not worth paying more to have removed from our foods. What is really ironic is that these so called nitrate free foods are preserved instead with salts to cure the meat and those salts often come from celery or beets which, you guessed it, contain even more nitrates anyway so the net effect is that you end up with actually more nitrites in those foods than the ‘nitrate free’ foods. 

What happens in the body when we eat Nitrates? 

As we now know, nitrates are present in many vegetables and when we eat these vegetables, let’s say beetroot, the nitrates in them are immediately converted into nitrites on contact with saliva. Research shows us that in the gut, this is reduced to Nitric Oxide by our gut bacteria that actually produces an anti-microbial effect, protecting us against pathogens. It also has a bactericidal effect in the gut, protecting us from Salmonella and other nasties. This means that we boost our immune function and also our gut motility and function when we eat foods containing nitrates and nitrites. (McKnight et al, 2007)  Nitrates don’t hang around in the body building up either, as some may have you believe, they have a very short half life, leaving our blood in less than 5 minutes (Hord, 2009). 

What about Cancer? 

The Big C

This is the scare that has everyone running for the hills.. the myth is that nitrites in processed meats cause cancer.  Interesting then that evidence from the working papers of the FDA (Food and Drug Administration in the US)  showing the original timeline for banning of nitrites concluded in the end that Nitrites do not cause cancer (this was back in 1981).  Recent research which is a meta analysis, this is a review of many pieces of research together, looking for patterns so a reliable way to draw conclusions based on the best research we have to date, concluded that high nitrite intake is associated with a REDUCED risk of gastric cancer. There are numerous studies showing that a high nitrate and nitrite consumption from food give beneficial health effects against cancer (Song et al, 2015). It does depend, the worry is with nitrosamines which are definitely carcinogenic. Burned processed meats can contain nitrosamines however we also make them endogenously (in the body). Your best shot here is to make sure that you eat plenty of antioxidant rich food, not just with bacon but all the time… your body will neutralise free radicals which damage your DNA and it can repair the damaged DNA too through many different mechanisms, but it needs the right ingredients to do that! Eat the rainbow of different colours of vegetables every day, each colour will give you different antioxidants that will help you to stay healthy.

What should you do? 

Eat bacon, get the good stuff of course, buy from your local farmer, get organic if you can and don’t worry about spending extra money on nitrite free bacon or ham. Enjoy your food, eat saturated fat and lay off the sugar,  the biscuits, the wheat and the empty carbs like rice and pasta. Cancer is fed by sugar through something called the Warburg effect. This is where the batteries of your cells called the mitochondria are hijacked by cancer due to damage. The sugar you eat is directed to a conversion into the building blocks of tumours (Outlive, Attia P, 2023) with very little left for your energy.  There is a very good case to say that you should try to eat your pork products either cured or smoked as both processed are anti-microbial and kill off pathogens and parasites like trichinosis (tapeworm). The upshot? Eat your pork cured and be assured that you this is actually an anti-cancer strategy, boosting your immune system and gut function and also your cardiovascular health. 

(with special thanks and credit for inspiration to Chris Kesser, MS)

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