Cancer risk from high-fat ready-to-eat meat
Baku, February 16 (AZERTAC). Bacon and rotisserie chicken are not only high in calories and fat grams - they also have higher levels of cancerous material. A team at Kansas State University have been looking at ready-to-eat meat with levels of heterocyclic amines, or HCAs. J. Scott Smith, professor of food chemistry, said studies have shown that humans who consume large amounts of HCAs in meat products have increased risk of stomach, colon and breast cancers. The research appears in a recent issue of Meat Science, the journal of the American Meat Science Association. The study focuses on eight types of ready-to-eat meat products: beef hot dogs, beef-pork-turkey hot dogs, deli roast beef, deli ham, deli turkey, fully cooked bacon, pepperoni and rotisserie chicken. Pepperoni had the least HCA content, 0.05 ng/g, followed by hot dogs and deli meat, 0.5 ng/g). Such amounts are low, and the researchers concluded that consuming such ready-to-eat meat products contributes very little to HCA intake. Fully cooked bacon, with 1.1 ng/g, and rotisserie chicken meat, with 1.9 ng/g, contained all five types of HCAs tested. Rotisserie chicken skin had significantly higher HCA levels, with 16.3 ng/g. This is because chicken skin contains more fat and protein and less moisture, and HCA levels tend to increase as moisture decreases, Smith said. "Based on this research, HCA consumption can be reduced by not eating chicken skin," he said.
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