Well Cooked Meat Can Raise Cancer Risk By Up T0 500%

As we are probably in the last few weeks of the barbecue season I hope this warning doesn’t come too late. If your answer to the question ‘how do you like your steak?’ is to say ‘extremely well done’ then for your health’s sake you might want to turn down the heat a little. The link between charring meat by frying, barbecuing or otherwise heavily cooking it and cancer has been made before but a new study from the University of Texas has just confirmed it.

Researchers there have found that people who eat well-done meat double their risk of developing bladder cancer when compared to people who eat meat on the rarer end of the spectrum. The reason? This type of cooking can lead to the formation of cancer-causing chemicals in the meat, due primarily to the heterocyclic amines (HCAs) that form when meat is cooked at very high heat.

There are three different HCA chemicals formed during high-heat cooking that, collectively, raise your cancer risk by more than 250 percent. And that astonishing figure is just for the average person; if you are already genetically predisposed to developing cancer then the risk is nearly doubled to almost 500 percent.

As I said, the link between cancer and very well cooked meat has already been made and the U.S. National Cancer Institute has identified a total of 17 different HCAs. Prior research has already established that these chemicals, which are produced when meat is charred, increase pancreatic cancer risk but now it appears that they contribute to bladder cancer as well.

The good news is that the study team made very clear in its report that meat itself is not necessarily the culprit in increasing cancer risk, but rather the intense cooking methods by which it is prepared. If you are patting yourself on the back because you don’t eat red meat I regret to inform you that chicken, pork and even fish cooked heavily may also form cancer-causing HCAs. This is a blow to me as one of my favourite meals is to marinade and then dry fry salmon steaks in a redhot nonstick pan until the surface is crispy — ah well, another favourite food hits ‘the occasional treats’ list!

So if you are addicted to the barbecue or grill then the best advice is to keep meat away from direct flames as this will help to reduce the development of HCAs and lower the risk of developing cancer.

Barbecue flavour – Without the health risk

A warm summer evening is often flavoured with the aroma of barbecued meat – or poisoned with the smoke from a burned steak. Barbecuing seems like a healthy way to eat meat, rather than frying or using oil, but there is a hidden danger when grilling meat and that is the presence of carcinogens known as Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH). They are the guys you can’t see, but you know their presence from the nice black stripes that they add to your meat.Meat contains fat, which is liquefied when heated and drips down into the barbecue. These fats then vaporize and release toxic gases that return into the meat above, and that you then absorb when you eat the meat. Cooked animal fats are known to be a cancer risk and unfortunately non organic meat also contains carcinogens such as hormone growth promoters, sodium nitrate as a preservative and MSG is added to barbecue mixes to enhance the flavour, and that can cause allergic reactions and headaches in some people.

Two things that can help you avoid this are to use a pan between the grill and the meat so the flames are never in contact with it – so get out that old camping frying pan – and as a bonus it won’t be so tough! Secondly, use a natural flavour enhancer instead of the MSG and there is a mix that will give your meat the authentic ‘blackened barbecue’ look. Mix together equal proportions of celery salt, dill, turmeric, cayenne pepper and paprika and smear the meat liberally with it before adding to the pan for a healthy, and delicious barbecue.