Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from how Stuffworks dot com where
Speaker 1: smart Happens. Hi Am Marshall Brain with today's question, what
Speaker 1: is sodium nitrate? It seems like lots of meats contain it?
Speaker 1: Is it in any way harmful? Sodium nitrate and it's
Speaker 1: close relative, sodium nitrite, are preservatives that you find in
Speaker 1: lots of processed meats. Stuff like salami, hot dogs, pepperoni, bologni, ham, bacon,
Speaker 1: and spam all contained. Sodium nitrate is one of the ingredients.
Speaker 1: Fresh meats don't contain any added chemicals, So the question
Speaker 1: is why is sodium nitrate added to all these processed meats.
Speaker 1: There are two reasons for adding these chemicals. First, they
Speaker 1: preserve the color of the meat, meaning that it looks
Speaker 1: pink like spam rather than gray like a cooked hamber. Here,
Speaker 1: you've probably noticed that nearly all meats that contain sodium
Speaker 1: nitrate or sodium nitrite remain pink or red even though
Speaker 1: they're cooked during processing. These chemicals also inhibit botulism to
Speaker 1: some degree. The jury is out on how harmful these
Speaker 1: substances are. Sodium nitrite reacts with stomach acid and other
Speaker 1: chemicals in the stomach to produce nitrosamines, which have been
Speaker 1: shown to cause cancer and animals when consumed in large quantities. However,
Speaker 1: there's not much sodium nitrate in meats, and we consume
Speaker 1: sodium nitrate from other foods as well, so it's not
Speaker 1: clear that they're harmful in the quantities we get from meat.
Speaker 1: Some people recommend that small children and pregnant women avoid
Speaker 1: these chemicals altogether just to be safe. Since neither canned
Speaker 1: chicken nor tuna have any redness to preserve, they generally
Speaker 1: do not contain these nitrates and of other topics. Because
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