Do any of you have a concern with the lunch meat and sodium nitrates found in them??
Until my nutritionist pointed me to some studies, I thought Subway was a good fast food. Ha, at least that's what the commercials told me.
If you research the topic, you can make your own decisions - you might just end up staying away from foods with Sodium Nitrates.

I post this one cite because my father in law died of Pancreatic Cancer this past year.


April 29, 2005


Two different studies, one from the University of Hawaii and the other from the University of Pittsburgh, point to potential cause and cure of one of the most aggressive cancers - pancreatic cancer. With the highest cancer mortality rate (some 80% of all those diagnosed die within one year) pancreatic cancer is now the fourth leading cause of cancer death among men and the fifth among women in the United States, according to the American Cancer Society.



In previous hallmark studies of pancreatic cancer prevention, the consumption of fish and green tea were shown to provide some improvement in the condition of pancreatic cancer patients and contributed to the fight against carcinogens. But in a study released last week by the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, the focus was not on a particular food or beverage, but on a spice, capsaicin, the element in hot peppers that make them “hot.”



Sanjay K. Srivastava, Ph.D., lead investigator and assistant professor, department of pharmacology for the university, treated human pancreatic cells in the lab with capsaicin to examine its antioxidative and anti-inflammatory potential. (Antioxidants are known to fight cancer cells.) What they found is that capsaicin induced programmed cell death without affecting normal pancreatic cells, giving this spice chemotherapeutic potential as a novel agent in the fight against pancreatic cancer.



In the Hawaii study, conducted by the University’s Cancer Research Center in Honolulu, these researchers followed 190,000 men and women of five different ethnic groups for seven years. The scientists concluded that those who ate high amounts of processed meats, like hot dogs, and breakfast or dinner sausages, had a 67% increase in the risk of developing pancreatic cancer over those who did not consume the products or consumed very few. The study also indicated that eating pork and red meat increased the risk of pancreatic cancer by 50%.



Those participants who did not consume cured or processed meat but ate chicken, fish, eggs or dairy products did not have increased rates of pancreatic cancer despite their equal or similar levels of natural fat and cholesterol. This led the scientists to believe that it is not the meat itself, or the fat, but the chemical agents, especially the use of sodium nitrates, which can lead to cancer. Sodium nitrates are well known to increase the development of nitrosamines in the body that promote the growth of cancer cells, particularly in the colon and the pancreas.



Once again reaffirming: we are what we eat!