Red meat has quite the wrap - is it good for us or terribly unhealthy?
The answer is that red meat is heart healthy unless it is cured.
It turns out that cured red meats such as sausage and bacon are seriously bad for the heart. The recommendation is eating these foods once per week at the MOST. Cured meats, which means meats that are smoked, processed with salt, or preserved with preservatives may raise your risk of cancer (particularly pancreatic cancer) and heart disease.
So, stay away from sausage, bacon, ham, smoked meats, salami, pastrami, pepperoni, cold cuts and sandwich meat.
However, fresh red meats are not nearly as bad for your heart as dieticians used to think. As long as red meat is not cured in any way it as actually good for you, particularly if it is lean.
So, feel free to enjoy lean ground beef, steak, lean pork chops, pork loin, lean stew beef, veal and lamb.
The preservatives often used to cure red meats and pork products are sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite. When these substances are subjected to high heat and the substances break down, nitrosamines are formed. Nitrosamines are known to cause cancer.
ReplyDeleteAnother good reason to read food labels!