this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2025
226 points (86.5% liked)

science

20165 readers
554 users here now

A community to post scientific articles, news, and civil discussion.

rule #1: be kind

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Curing (removing moisture from food by means of salt) is a distinct process from smoking (adding smoke to food as well as removing moisture via heat). Curing with nitrite and nitrate based salts (sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite) is what’s been implicated in cancer.

Smoking meat is much more complicated from a chemistry perspective. Different types of wood, different temperatures, moisture content, salt content, and cooking durations can all affect the concentrations of carcinogenic compounds in the food. For example, softwoods (such as pine) tend to produce a lot of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), a known class of carcinogens, but thankfully softwood is undesirable as a smoke wood anyway so is rarely used.

Smoking technique can also dramatically affect the result. Poor smoking technique allows the wood to smoulder at a lower temperature, producing a harsher smoke with more carcinogenic, toxic, and bitter compounds. Expert smoking technique uses a smaller, hotter fire which produces a much cleaner smoke that also results in better flavour.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

TL;DR: Cancer is coming for us all.