What's In Your Hot Dog?

• Because some high end shops use it, it is okay?  Kind of like how expensive vodka is good for you? Like sodium nitrite, sodium nitrate forms nitrosamines, a human carcinogen, known to cause DNA damage and increased cellular degeneration. Studies have shown a link between increased levels of nitrates and increased deaths from certain diseases including Alzheimer's, diabetes mellitus and Parkinson's, possibly through the damaging effect of nitrosamines on DNA.[5] Nitrosamines, formed in cured meats containing sodium nitrate and nitrite, have been linked to gastric cancer and oesophageal cancer.[6] Sodium nitrate and nitrite are associated with a higher risk of colorectal cancer.[7] World Cancer Research Fund UK,[8] states that one of the reasons that processed meat increases the risk of colon cancer is its content of nitrate.

• and corn syrup

• mmm...mechanically separated meats....

• Hi Don, If you read the article you'd see that the explanation of sodium nitrate comes directly from Scientific American. I encourage you to take your arguments up with them.

• It's obvious you don't know anything about food. Sodium nitrate, the other ingredient in curing salt, is found in cured meats of even the very highest quality. You can buy it from artisan charcuterie supply stores and it is an essential ingredient of many sausages and bacon. (If you didn't use it you would get botulism). Either you didn't do your journalism homework or you're a closet vegetarian.

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