The Nitrite/Nitrate Dilemma.

Nitrates and nitrites get a bad rap.  I don’t know exactly how this all started if I’m honest; the crusade against all preservatives.  Can anyone give me a date?  Did someone just flip a switch?  Does anyone have the number for the guy who started all this?  I’d like to talk to him.

We get questions pretty often in the shop asking if our bacon has nitrates.  The answer is yes; which means no, they don’t want bacon.  But nitrates serve a very important purpose.  They’re not evil little molecules that we’re unleashing into an unsuspecting belly or sausage.  They are beneficial to curing and a stern safety measure for the prevention of Clostridium Botulinum, which creates botulism.  If you want to explain to your friends you have botulism, but you’ll be damned if that will upset your puritanical stance on food.  Go right ahead, kid.  You have the floor.

Maybe I’m getting a little ahead of myself.  Let’s talk about what we’re talking about.  Nitrates and nitrites are essentially the same thing on a molecular level.  There’s sodium nitrite or potassium nitrite and sodium nitrate or potassium nitrate.  The difference is the addition of 1 oxygen molecule to create nitrate out of nitrite.  Still with me?  Cool.  The reason they were originally used was for the pleasant color they left to meat after curing.  Instead of turning an unpleasant brown/grey, the meat maintains a rosy hue, much like it’s original color before oxidation.

So, what does the addition of one oxygen molecule do?  It does only one very important thing that you need to know.  The addition of that molecule makes nitrate more sensitive to heat.  In extremely high doses it is carcinogenic.  That’s why (I guess) nitrites and nitrates get a bad name.  It’s true, nitrate can give you cancer…if you swallow a glass a day for about a year.  My advice as a food service professional would be to NOT do that.  That is bad.  It will taste horrible.

So how did this happen?  Well, we’re over-reacting to the fact that most preservatives are essentially non-natural, steroided-out super-molecules.  At least that’s how it looks from this side of the counter.  Rather than look at each piece of the puzzle separately, we’ve judged them all by the same measure.  ADD and ADHD preservatives you can judge all day.  Some of these preservatives sound like they were made by scientists locked away in a small chem lab in the Death Star.  Respiratory problems can come with some of them and yet here we are, living with them as a food enhancer.

I guess when science fails you (I’m looking at you, FDA), there is always history to fall back on.  Everybody is scrambling to get back to “the way things were” so fast.  The mad scramble to reach the future of hoverboards and flying cars seems to have dissipated in the last few years.  We’re all anxious to find, once again, the traditions that got us to where we are as a culture.  In our food culture, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a more necessary ingredient than salt.  And that is exactly what we’re talking about.