2019-11-28

[public] 357K views, 22.3K likes, 847 dislikes audio only

What I've Learned

A look at the claims that processed meat causes cancer.

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Link to Dr. Mark Miller's article on nitrites/nitrosamines - https://bit.ly/34vKge6

While I recommend you read the whole thing, Mark Miller (PhD in Pharmacology, previously fellow of American college of nutrition, 20 yrs exp as a medical professor) boils his article down like this:

"In short, dietary nitrate and nitrite do not provoke cancer via nitrosamines because they are:

• too stable

• the wrong charge

• must be converted to other reactive nitrogen species

• the rates that nitrate and nitrite are converted to nitric oxide can support cardiovascular functional optimization but are inadequate for nitrosamine formation, for the same reasons that endogenous production from either nNOS or eNOS do not support nitrosamine formation, and neither does saliva."

There is a rebuttal video titled 'What I've Learned' is Wrong about Bacon and Cancer.

Flaws with that video at a glance:

-While I did not mean to suggest “sodium nitrite added to bacon makes it good for the arteries” in my video, Mic does not present sufficient evidence to claim nitrate/nitrite from the plants is good whereas nitrite from bacon is bad. (Fun fact: 93% of the total ingestion of nitrite is derived from saliva)

-Skips over some very complicated science with ad hominem logic.

-Misinterprets me as saying ‘nitrosamines cannot be formed in the body,’ I didn’t say this.

-Confuses red meat with processed meat.

-Uses studies that are looking at “apparent total nitrosamines” rather than specific nitrosamines in meat. This is important because there are several types of nitrosamines with different severity of effects on the body.

-His data for endogenous formation of NDMA is based on ​in vitro​ studies ​looking not at red meat,​ but fish, and in specific, a type of fish that has the specific precursor to NDMA (DMA) in its muscle. Meat does not typically have this precursor. The study even found no NDMA formation from grilled meat.

-Mic confuses ​total endogenously formed NDMA​ with ​NDMA formed endogenously as the result of eating red meat/processed meat.​ (The study he references makes no mention of endogenous NDMA formation ​via meat consumption​.)

Here is the full response: https://www.patreon.com/posts/32265637