A year ago I posted a two minute video entitled Carcinogens in the Smell of Frying Bacon, in which I described the ability of the fumes generated by frying meat to mutate DNA. This helped explain both the increased risk of respiratory tract cancer among cooks as well as the lower proportion of deaths from respiratory diseases and lung cancer among vegetarians.
If you are going to cook something like bacon and eggs, the barbeque people have the right idea—do it outdoors in the fresh air. Up to 10 times the amount of particles are deposited deep into the lung of individuals cooking indoors compared to outdoors.
Pregnant women, newborns, and young children may be at particular risk. In my 4-min video Meat Fumes: Dietary Secondhand Smoke I show that the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in the vapors released from cooking meat may not only increase the risk of cancer, but also be hazardous for fetal development. Pregnant women exposed to the grilling of meat—even if they don’t eat it—appear to give birth to babies with a weight deficit and a smaller head circumference.
Even just living next door to a restaurant preparing meat may pose a hazard. Researchers estimated the excess cancer cases expected among neighbors of various types of restaurants—Chinese, American-style, and barbeque joints. Guess which was type of restaurant was the riskiest? See my video Meat Fumes: Dietary Secondhand Smoke to find out—you may be surprised!
How else can we protect our lungs? See Preventing COPD With Diet and Treating COPD With Diet.
And how else can we protect the next generation? Feel free to check out:
- Hair Testing for Mercury Before Considering Pregnancy
- The Wrong Way to Detox
- Diet Soda and Preterm Birth
- DDT in Umbilical Cord Blood
- How Fast Can Children Detoxify from PCBs?
- Chicken Consumption and the Feminization of Male Genitalia
- Pregnant Vegans at Risk for Iodine Deficiency
- American Vegans Placing Babies At Risk
-Michael Greger, M.D.
PS: If you haven’t yet, you can subscribe to my videos for free by clicking here and watch my full 2012 – 2015 presentations Uprooting the Leading Causes of Death, More than an Apple a Day, From Table to Able, and Food as Medicine.
