barbecue and cancer

[maher]

a new study links cooking meat till it chars (read any crust on the grill) with prostate cancer.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060403/hl_nm/cancer_bbq_dc

i dont know if this isnt just more scaremongering, but im not giving up a good rare on the inside crusty on the outside steak for no one

[Gifted Gourmet]

I'd really like to see a study on men who consume barbecue, predominantly in the South, and look at their rates of cancer as opposed to some other part of the country .. might be quite interesting ... rats are less interesting because I rarely see them (they are well hidden!) in barbecue places ... thanks for the article though ...

MSNBC last summer on grilling and cancer correlation

[Raoul Duke]

If you read all the literature on disease processes, you'll realize that living causes cancer. Certainly some habits accelerate the process, but understanding that anything in moderation is OK. I'd be looking closer at the family gene pool than articles that tend to scare us. But if you believe those articles I'll take your excess wine, cigars, BBQ steak and that whiskey over there, pack up them eggs, and jes' that pork isn't very good either.

[hwilson41]

If you read all the literature on disease processes, you'll realize that living causes cancer.  Certainly some habits accelerate the process, but understanding that anything in moderation is OK.  I'd be looking closer at the family gene pool than articles that tend to scare us. But if you believe those articles I'll take your excess wine, cigars, BBQ steak and that whiskey over there, pack up them eggs, and jes' that pork isn't very good either.

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We should also never lose sight of the fact that these folks are paid to find things that cause cancer. If one were to go two or three years without finding a single thing that caused cancer, one's career prospects might be considerably diminished .

[Hest88]

Is this a new study? I thought they'd concluded this long ago.

[Pan]

If you read all the literature on disease processes, you'll realize that living causes cancer.  Certainly some habits accelerate the process, but understanding that anything in moderation is OK.  I'd be looking closer at the family gene pool than articles that tend to scare us.[...]

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I'm afraid that many of us have cancers in the family. Is it possible that we should be concerned about these other things making it even more likely for us to get cancer in the future?

[NYC Mike]

Is this a new study? I thought they'd concluded this long ago.

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Someone does one that says the same thing every year right before BBQ season.

mike

[The Apostate]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't McGee cover this in "The Curious Cook" and dismiss it as bad science?

Perhaps there is new data? Or are they just re-hashing the same stuff?

[Adiabatic]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't McGee cover this in "The Curious Cook" and dismiss it as bad science?

Perhaps there is new data? Or are they just re-hashing the same stuff?

←

I hadn't heard that, but I would be interested to read more. Incomplete combustion of fats creates a class of chemicals called PAHs some of which definitely cause cancer. Anytime you have burning fat, like fat dripping onto hot coals, in theory you are elevating your risk of cancer.

I grill like a fiend. I figure if I've got to die, there are worse ways than dying from eating too much grilled meat.

[maher]

it reminds me of that old joke where the explorers get to choose their method of execution...

[SWISS_CHEF]

Hey, maybe this will bring the price of steak down!

[EdS]

Boiled meat for everyone!

Actually, pot-au-feu's pretty good.

[scubadoo97]

We've been hearing that meats cooked with high heat causes cancer for several years.

The worrisome chemicals created by grilling meats are called heterocyclic amines (HAs). They form during grilling, broiling, or even searing meat in a very hot frying pan, where the very high temperatures break down the amino acid creatinine.

Heterocyclic amines have been linked to many types of cancers

[McAuliflower]

Science News had an article about this 6 years or so back. Tests with hamburger patties found that adding ground cherries to the meat reduced the levels of carcinogens significantly.

Science News Article.

Now there's a PR opportunity!

edited to add link.

Edited April 16, 2006 by McAuliflower (log)

[Jim Dixon]

From my slightly outdated page on barbecue...

Drink dark beer. Japanese researchers, in an article published in the January 1999 issue of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry (pretty standard reading for bbq lovers), showed that the 24 beers they tested showed "potent inhibitory effect" against mutagens found in several types of HAAS. Dark beer worked best.

Jim