Processed Meat Unsafe For Human Consumption; Cancer Experts Warn of Dietary Dangers

World cancer experts have finally declared that processed meats cause cancer, and anyone seeking to avoid cancer should avoid eating all processed meats for life.

Hundreds of cancer researchers took part in a five-year project spanning more than 7,000 clinical studies and designed to document the links between diet and cancer. Their conclusion, published in the World Cancer Research Fund's report, Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity and the Prevention of Cancer: a Global Perspective (2007), has rocked the health world with a declaration that all people should immediately stop buying and eating processed meat products and that all processed meat should be avoided for life!

Processed meats, the report explains, are simply too dangerous for human consumption. And why? Because they contain chemical additives that are known to greatly increase the risk of various cancers, including colorectal cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, leukemia, brain tumors, pancreatic cancer and many more. The report, published at this DietAndCancerReport.org website also recommends that consumers:

• Avoid all sugary soft drinks for life.
• Exercise at least 30 minutes a day.
• Get lean and fit, without becoming underweight.
• Limit consumption of ALL meats (even fresh meat).
• Breastfeed all infants for their first six months, avoiding infant formula.

Sadly, the WCRF still does not recommend that consumers use nutritional supplements to help protect themselves from cancer, indicating that the group still has a lot to learn about the role of medicinal mushrooms, sea vegetables, microalgae, Chinese herbs, rainforest herbs and superfood extracts in preventing and reversing cancer. But at least the group's recommendation that consumers now avoid all processed meat products is a huge step in the right direction. It is the first time that any internationally-recognized cancer organization has found the courage to make a partial proclaimation about the health hazards of the chemicals found in processed meat products. It's almost as big a deal as when the American Medical Association, after years of taking millions of dollars from tobacco companies, finally admitted that smoking causes lung cancer and heart disease. (A decade after the scientific evidence was irrefutable, of course, but then again, the AMA was making money off Big Tobacco by running tobacco ads in JAMA...)

What is "processed meat" exactly?

Here's the difference:

Fresh meat usually has only one ingredient: The meat! Fresh meat is refrigerated and has a very short shelf life (just a few days, usually). It's usually packaged in simple wrappers, with no fancy logos or color printing.

Processed meat has many ingredients and is usually packaged for long-term shelf life. These products almost always contain sodium nitrite, the cancer-causing chemical additive that meat companies use as a color fixer to turn their meat products a bright red "fresh-looking" color. Processed meat products include:

• Bacon
• Sausage
• Pepperoni
• Beef jerky
• Deli slices
• Hot dogs
• Sandwich meat (including those served at restaurants)
• Ham
• Meat "gift" products like Christmas sausages
• Meat used in canned soups
• Meat used in frozen pizza
• Meat used in kid's lunch products
• Meat used in ravioli, spaghetti or Italian pasta products

... and many more meat products.

Unless it says "NITRITE FREE" on the front label, you can bet it's made with cancer-causing sodium nitrite!

(Hint: You will only find nitrite-free meat products in two places in the grocery store: 1) In the fresh meat section where you can buy freshly-ground hamburger, for example, and 2) In the freezer, where you can find "natural" meat products that are nitrite-free.

What are the dangerous chemicals in processed meats?

Sodium nitrite is one of the most dangerous chemicals added to processed meats. Please be aware:

• You MUST read the ingredients list to find the sodium nitrite! Meat product companies do not list this ingredient on the front of the package.

• Even ORGANIC meat products and NATURAL meat products can still contain sodium nitrite. So read the labels to be sure, and avoid buying any meat product made with sodium nitrite.

• Be especially careful of food for kids! Virtually all packaged food products containing meat and marketed to children contain sodium nitrite! (Read the ingredients to protect your children.)

Monosodium glutamate (MSG) is a second dangerous chemical found in virtually all processed meat products. MSG is a dangerous excitotoxin linked to neurological disorders such as migraine headaches, Alzheimer's disease, loss of appetite control, obesity and many other serious health conditions. Manufacturers use MSG to add flavor to dead-tasting processed meat products.

Essentially, dead meat products look and taste dead (because they are), so meat companies use the following three ingredients to make them look fresh and taste interesting:

Sodium nitrite makes the meat look red and fresh. (But it promotes cancer.)

MSG makes the meat taste savory. (But it causes neurological disorders.)

Processed salt makes the meat taste more interesting. (But it causes nutritional problems and high blood pressure.)

On top of these three chemical additives, processed meats also contain saturated animal fat that is often contaminated with PCBs, heavy metals, pesticide residues and other dangerous substances.

By Mike Adams, Health Ranger www.naturalnews.com
You can learn more about dangerous chemicals in the food supply in my book, Grocery Warning, available from Truth Publishing.

Or you can download my free Honest Food Guide from www.HonestFoodGuide.org which reveals the true health dangers of numerous chemicals added to processed foods. The Honest Food Guide has now been downloaded by over one million people.

 

 

Food manufacturers hide dangerous ingredients in everyday foods by using confusing terms on the label

The Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act will take effect in January 2006 and will require food companies to use common names for eight food allergens such as milk, shellfish, eggs, peanuts, fish, wheat, and soy. There has been a lot of press about this Consumer Protection Act, but very little discussion about the other ingredients hidden in foods by food manufacturers that pose a legitimate health risk to all consumers, not just those with specific food allergens.

 

As a good example of the kind of ingredients that are hidden on food labels, let's take a look at MSG, also called monosodium glutamate. MSG is an excitotoxin -- an ingredient known to cause nerve damage by overexciting nerves. This is exactly how MSG enhances the taste of foods: by overexciting the taste buds on your tongue. While MSG is sometimes listed directly on the label, it is more frequently hidden in other ingredients, such as yeast extract, autolyzed vegetable protein, or hydrolyzed vegetable protein. All three of these ingredients contain monosodium glutamate, and yet they are designed to mislead consumers by avoiding mentioning MSG directly on the label.

Other ingredients may be misleading without necessarily being dangerous. One such ingredient is carmine -- a red coloring frequently used in yogurt, candies, fruit drinks and sweets. Carmine is actually made from the dead, ground-up husks of female red beetles. These beetles, which are typically raised in the Canary Islands, are dried and ground up to create a red paste. This red paste is then exported to the United States and other countries where food is produced. It is added to foods to give them a rose-like color, something similar to a strawberry color. It's listed on the label as "carmine", not as "ground-up red beetles." And while carmine doesn't necessarily pose a health risk to American consumers, it is still an example of dishonest labeling, because people have the right to know when ground-up insects are being used in their foods. There are probably 100 items in your grocery store right now with carmine listed right on the label. You can go to your store right now and check it out, and verify that what I'm relating here is true. (Pick up practically any strawberry yogurt...)

 

There are other ingredients used on food labels that are, in fact, extremely toxic to the human body, and yet are not listed with appropriate descriptors. One such ingredient is sodium nitrite. Sodium nitrite is added to most packaged meat products found in a grocery store, and even in health food stores. To most people, sodium nitrite simply sounds like a form of salt, but, in fact, this ingredient is extremely carcinogenic. When combined with your saliva and digestive enzymes, sodium nitrite creates cancer-causing compounds known as nitrosamines. These nitrosamines are so toxic to biological systems that they are actually used to give lab rats cancer in laboratory tests. In humans, the consumption of sodium nitrite has been strongly correlated with brain tumors, leukemia, and cancers of the digestive tract. Yet this ingredient carries absolutely no warning on food labels, and in fact, seems to sound like a perfectly safe ingredient, like sodium. As with carmine, you can go to your grocery store and find hundreds, if not thousands, of products using sodium nitrite. Look for it on bacon, ham, pepperoni, and other packaged meat products. In fact, it's almost impossible to find a packaged meat product that isn't made with sodium nitrite. This ingredient is especially prevalent in hot dogs and lunch meats. It has been clinically proven to cause leukemia, brain tumors and other forms of cancer.

 

By the way, if sodium nitrite is so dangerous, why do food manufacturers use it? Because it adds red color to meat products that would otherwise appear to be a putrid gray color. By making them look red with the help of this color additive sodium nitrite, these meat products look more delicious and fresh, even though they are not. Some of these products have the shelf life of several months, which is far longer than any normal piece of meat would last without looking rather undesirable.

 

The three ingredients mentioned here are only small examples of the kind of ingredients used by food manufacturers that pose potential harm to consumers and yet are not appropriately described on the food labels. Food labeling is frequently a con game, where the food manufacturer attempts to put ingredients into foods that benefit the manufacturer and yet harm the consumer. Of course, the manufacturer does not want the consumer to be aware that these ingredients are harmful, or that they are even present in the foods, so they rely on confusing names or innocent-sounding names, like "carmine", in order to avoid the chance that consumers might be concerned.

Taken as a whole, this demonstrates the high level of dishonesty and lack of integrity at food manufacturing companies. Many such companies in the business of manufacturing the cheapest, most profitable processed foods that consumers will buy, regardless of how healthy they may be. And as we can see from manufacturing practices today (and examples throughout the history of modern food), food manufacturers will use practically any ingredient they can get away with, including ones that are well-known to cause chronic disease. In modern times, such ingredients include hydrogenated oils and homogenized milk fats, which are found in virtually all cow's milk products.

The bottom line to all this is that the new Act requiring accurate labeling of food allergens is certainly a small step in the right direction for protecting consumers from food manufacturing companies, but it barely scratches the surface of the kind of labeling requirements that need to be enforced in order to prevent consumers from being exposed to other ingredients that promote chronic disease.

Tuesday, July 27, 2004 by: Mike Adams, NaturalNews Editor

 

 

Melamine Found in U.S. Baby Formula, FDA Says

Date Published: Wednesday, November 26th, 2008

Source: http://www.newsinferno.com

Melamine has been detected in a sample of U.S.-made infant formula, the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) announced yesterday.  Though melamine-tainted formula has sickened tens of thousands of children in China, the FDA maintains the amount found in the U.S.-made baby formula poses no danger.

Melamine is an industrial chemical that is used to make plastics, fertilizer, and fire retardants. In recent years, a number of Chinese manufactures have been involved in scandals involving melamine tainted food.  In those cases, melamine was added to products in order to make it appear they contained higher levels of protein.

In 2007, melamine-tainted wheat gluten, used as an ingredient in pet food, killed at least 16 dogs and cats, sickened thousands of others and led to one of the biggest pet food recalls in American history.

 

Melamine is a renal toxin that can cause kidney stones and acute renal failure if ingested in large amounts.  In China, melamine-tainted formula has sickened over 50,000 children, killing at least four. The melamine was apparently added to milk powder by manufacturers to make it appear that their watered-down baby formula was more nutritious than it really was.

Melamine has since been found in dozens of foods around the world that had  been made with Chinese-manufactured milk powder.  More than 13 countries, including the U.S., discovered products made with melamine-tainted ingredients.  The list of tainted food included  candy, yogurt, frozen desserts, biscuits, instant coffee, milk tea products, and other beverages.

 

Since the Chinese infant formula scandal broke, the FDA has been detaining imports from that country that contain dairy ingredients for further testing.  The agency has also been testing U.S.-made baby formula, although U.S. manufacturers do not obtain ingredients from China for formula sold in the U.S.

According to the FDA, tests on 77 samples of U.S.-made formula detected “trace” amounts of melamine in one sample.  According to CNN.com, last month, the FDA set the safety threshold for melamine at 2,500 parts per billion for foods other than infant formula. The agency said it did not have enough data to set a safety threshold for infants.  The amount of melamine found in the sample of infant formula was less than 250 parts per billion, CNN.com said.

In the U.S., melamine is not allowed in human or pet food, although the FDA has approved melamine as a “food contact substance.”  An FDA source interviewed by The Wall Street Journal speculated that the melamine contamination was the result of contact with the chemical during processing and packaging.