Have you noticed foods labeled with nitrites or nitrates?
The danger of nitrites
Matt Cook here, and my colleague Heather reads every food label and avoids nitrites in her foods because they give her migraines.
In some ways, she’s lucky.
Because while added nitrites and nitrates are a widely known trigger for migraines, they’ve also been linked to a higher association with type 2 diabetes.
Because she’s had to avoid nitrites, she also avoids this risk.
You can get nitrites and nitrates in your diet two ways.
The first way is the naturally occurring type of nitrites and nitrates.
The second way is nitrites and nitrates that are used as a food additive.
Nitrites and nitrates occur naturally in water and soil and are commonly ingested from drinking water and dietary sources. They are also used as food additives to increase shelf life.
It’s the food additive type that’s the problem.
A study published in PLOS shows that there is a link between dietary exposure to nitrites and a risk of type 2 diabetes.
This study accessed self reported data from over 200,000 people.
They analyzed self reported diet information and compared that data to health outcomes.
The researchers found that participants in the NutriNet-Santé cohort reporting a higher intake of nitrites overall and specifically from food additives, and non-additives sources had a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
This is problematic.
Type 2 diabetes signals a collapse in metabolic function and normally also occurs alongside other chronic diseases like cardiovascular diseases.
That’s because when your metabolism is messed up, your health will be messed up as well.
One of the biggest sources of added nitrites in the diet is processed meat.
These results provide a new piece of evidence in the context of current discussions regarding the need for a reduction of nitrite additives’ use in processed meats by the food industry, and could support the need for better regulation of soil contamination by fertilizers.
Things like bacon, jerky, pepperoni, and sausages often have nitrites added to increase shelf life.
They will say if they contain nitrites right on the label.
But that increase in shelf life from the nitrites comes at a price to human health.
Eating processed meat is linked to cancer as well as heart disease and diabetes.
A number of studies have found links between processed meat and various forms of cancer, as well as heart disease and diabetes.
Researchers at Harvard state the risk of meats processed with nitrites succinctly.
The current evidence suggests the higher [the] intake of processed meat, the higher the risk of chronic diseases and mortality,” said Frank Hu, Fredrick J. Stare Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology and chair of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
I would suggest that you limit your intake of food additives in general.
Most of the time they are very bad for your body.
Several public health authorities worldwide already recommend citizens to limit their consumption of foods containing controversial additives, including sodium nitrite.
You should aim to have ingredient lists for your food that are clean and made up of food, not chemical additives.
It’s not only nitrites that are the problem…
Food gums, artificial sweeteners, and other additives can also have bad influences on human health.
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