Latest gem from my gym. This one has me a little nervous...I grill at least 3x's a week and typically, it is 'well done' b/c that is the way hubby eats so I've gotten used to it over the years... I do tend to marinate.
Here is the snippet:
6 Ways to Have a Healthier Barbecue!

Many love a good barbecue, but research has shown that grilling meats at high heat can cause the carcinogens heterocyclic amine (HCA) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH’s) to form. And it’s not an insignificant amount. One study found that people who consume well-done meat – grilled, barbecued, pan-fried, or broiled – on a regular basis were 60% more likely to get pancreatic cancer. Longer cooking times might also increase the risk of stomach, lung, and breast cancer. But you don’t have to give up your burgers just yet. Read about 6 tips to making safe grilled fare.



1. Use a Marinade. A 2008 study found that spicy marinades can decrease HCA formation, so don’t be afraid to sprinkle on the red pepper. Certain spices are packed with antioxidants that will help to eliminate HCAs in the grilling process. One study showed that adding spices, such as thyme, sage, and garlic, can reduce the amount of total HCAs by 60% compared to the control.

2. Add Alcohol. At your next barbecue, don’t forget beer and wine…for your marinade. We know red wine is full of antioxidants, and this can carry over in your marinades. Marinating beef in red wine for six hours before grilling decreased the amount of carcinogens—40% fewer than in beef that wasn’t marinated—according to a study by the University of Porto in Portugal. This same study found similar positive effects using beer, and participants gave the beer-marinated beef top marks for quality.

3. Turn Down the Heat. Well done shouldn’t be in your vocabulary if you’re trying to cut down on carcinogens. Studies have shown that higher temperatures lead to an increase in HCAs. Allow some extra time, and try to cook your meat below 325°F, which is the temperature at which HCAs begin to form. To ensure that you’re meeting the minimum cooking temperatures, invest in a meat thermometer, and make sure your burgers have an internal temperature of 160°F.

4. Precook Food in the Microwave. Before your fire up the grill, nuke meat in the microwave for one or two minutes at medium power. Studies have shown that microwaving meat for two minutes prior to cooking decreased HCAs by 90%. Just remember to throw out the juice—that’s where the HCAs lurk.

5. Grill Veggies. Grilled veggies offer that same hot-off-the-grill taste but don’t contain carcinogens like their meaty counterparts. Portobello mushroom burgers are a great hearty option. However, if you crave grilled meat, make kebabs. Using half meat, half veggies is healthier and cuts down on the HCAs.

6. Less is More When it Comes to Marinating. Though this may sound counterintuitive, marinating meat for long lengths of times may lower the percentage of antioxidants in the sauces. A 2010 study found that marinating meat in sauce for five hours prior to oven baking cut down the antioxidant activity in the sauce compared with cooking after shorter marinating times. Play it on the safe side by aiming to marinate your meat for no more than a few hours. Marinades don’t soak deep into the meat, so there’s not a lot of flavor advantage to an overnight marinade. And brushing a little extra sauce on the meat shortly before serving could give you an extra boost of antioxidants.



Source: Bring on the Barbecue by Mara Betsch. Health.com

It makes sense to me; animal flesh is eaten raw by every other predator on this planet, why does Man think he needs to burn it before he eats it? How much I cook my meat depends on the animal it came from. Chicken I cook all but the last couple of innermost layers, steak I cook the single outermost layer, and pork just gets warmed up. The only one I cook until "done" is ground beef. Something happens when they grind up a cows flesh that just makes it feel and taste repulsive when raw, IMO. Eventually, I want to eat all my meat completely raw.

Cooking the meat too much destroys certain things that would otherwise maintain us in perfect health. However, cooking the meat too much and cooking with extremely high heat are not the same thing. You can cook at extreme heat but for a short time so that the steak is only seared on each side while the middle is still rare and juicy. You can also cook at low heat but for such a long time that the meat ends up completely cooked through and through.

In the Stefansson all meat trial we find that cooking the meat too much will cause scurvy. But cooking the meat up to medium will retain much of the stuff that prevents scurvy. But scurvy is caused by a vitamin C deficiency, yes? Well, no since the data we got from the Stefansson all meat trial refutes the vitamin C idea.

What about the idea that we should cook the meat thoroughly to kill bacteria and stuff so we don't get sick? But we can't cook the meat too much so we don't get cancer. We could just avoid meat altogether. But then meat contains essential nutrients not found anywhere else. What to do, what to do...

But wait a minute, we've been eating meat for over 2.5 million years and cooking it for about 1.5 million years. Yet we've only gotten cancer since the last 100 years? Something's not right.

Maybe this is a stupid theory, but what about the chemicals released burning charcoal? Propane wouldn't fit this theory...charcoal may not either, but it was a thought.

Well then we couldn't blame the meat. And those grilled veggies would be just as toxic as grilled meat.

M Levac...you say we've only gotten cancer since the last hundred years which I was curious about so I did a search and found this:

The oldest description of human cancer was found in an Egyptian papyri written between 3000-1500 BC. It referred to tumors of the breast. The oldest specimen of a human cancer was found in the remains of a female skull dating back to the Bronze Age (1900-1600 BC).The mummified skeletal remains of Peruvian Incas, dating back 2400 years ago, contained lesions suggestive of malignant melanoma. And cancer was found in fossilized bones and manuscripts of ancient Egypt. Cancer is not a disease of our modern industrialized age, as some may have believed at one time.

One of the earliest human cancers found in the remains of mummies was a bone cancer suggestive of osteosarcoma. Louis Leakey found the oldest possible hominid malignant tumor in 1932 from the remains of either a Homo erectus or an Australopithecus. This tumor was suggestive of a Burkitt’s lymphoma (although that nomenclature was certainly not in use then). Diseases that we know to be rare cancers today have had a long history.

Thanks for the correction. I'll just retract my statement. I'll propose another one. Cancer cells can only use glucose for fuel because their mitochondria is turned off. The mitochondria is turned off because that's where apoptosis is controlled from. Consequently, cancer cells can't kill themselves. A side effect of this is that the only way cancer cells can transform fuel into ATP is through anaerobic fermentation which is done in the nucleus. And the only fuel which can be fermented in the nucleus is glucose. Thus, the real cause of cancer is not meat or fat or anything like that, instead it's sugar.

The enzyme that replicates DNA is a protein. Advanced Glycation End-products is the combining of sugars with proteins thereby corrupting them so that they don't work anymore or work differently. Thus, eating lots of sugar will increase these AGEs and some of those AGEs could very well be thse enzymes that replicate DNA. A badly replicated DNA could very well produce a cancerous cell. Thus, the real cause of cancer is not meat or fat or anything like that, instead it's sugar.

Insulin promotes cell division through its action on IGF-1. Since eating carbs stimulates insulin, then it's reasonable to assume that eating carbs stimulates cell division. Cancer is also uncontrolled cell division. Meat contains protein but it also contains fat. Protein does stimulate insulin but fat mitigates this effect as seen with the glycemic index of ice cream which is lower than sugar itself. Further, a chronic and high intake of carbs produces chronic hyperinsulinemia, i.e. high insulin levels. Protein does not have this capacity. We see that the real cause of cancer is not meat or fat or anything like that, instead it's sugar.

One thing about sugar is that when we eat it, it stops the production of ketones. Ketones act directly on the recycling of junk protein. One of these junk proteins could very well be the enzyme that replicates DNA. Thus, meat not only does not cause cancer but since it contains fat and fat is where ketones come from, but meat actually fights cancer by eliminating the potential causal agents like AGEs.

If I'm not mistaken, the immune system requires fatty acids to work properly. And sugar depresses the immune system for a significant amount of time and is dose dependent. The primary agent which fights cancer is the immune system. Thus, eating lots of sugar and little fat will promote the growth of cancer if only because it allows it to grow instead of fighting it. Again, meat or fat or anything like that is not the cause of cancer. To the contrary, meat and fat fight cancer. Sugar allows cancer to spread by reducing the effectiveness of our immune system.

However, if there is already cancer, then eating lots of protein will give this cancer the substrate to replicate. Cells can't replicate if there's no protein to do so after all. But that is a very small part in cancer growth after considering everything we already know about the effects of sugar on cancer. Indeed, even if we don't eat so much protein but eat enough sugar so that this cancer is strong, the cancer will find the protein it needs by taking it elsewhere in our own body. This effect is called cachexia. Death comes not because the cancer has invaded too much tissue but because there is not enough healthy tissue left to keep the body alive, i.e they die of emaciation. Protein is required by all cells and protein deficiency will only weaken healthy cells and allow cancer cells to remain just as strong relatively.

And to back up your theory...

In 1924, the German Nobel laureate Otto Warburg first published his observations of a common feature he saw in fast-growing tumors: unlike healthy cells, which generate energy by metabolizing sugar in their mitochondria, cancer cells appeared to fuel themselves exclusively through glycolysis, a less-efficient means of creating energy through the fermentation of sugar in the cytoplasm. Warburg believed that this metabolic switch was the primary cause of cancer, a theory that he strove, unsuccessfully, to establish until his death in 1970.

To the two researchers in Würzburg, the theoretical debate about what is now known as the Warburg effect — whether it is the primary cause of cancer or a mere metabolic side effect — is irrelevant. What they believe is that it can be therapeutically exploited. The theory is simple: If most aggressive cancers rely on the fermentation of sugar for growing and dividing, then take away the sugar and they should stop spreading. Meanwhile, normal body and brain cells should be able to handle the sugar starvation; they can switch to generating energy from fatty molecules called ketone bodies — the body's main source of energy on a fat-rich diet — an ability that some or most fast-growing and invasive cancers seem to lack.

Here is the full link on the study they are doing- the problem is that they are only allowed to enroll those who have run out of other options: "All have exhausted traditional treatments, such as surgery, radiation and chemo, and even some alternative ones like hyperthermia and autohemotherapy. " Most of the patients were not able to stick with that way of eating and missed sweets but for those that were...The good news is that for five patients who were able to endure three months of carb-free eating, the results were positive: the patients stayed alive, their physical condition stabilized or improved and their tumors slowed or stopped growing, or shrunk.

Full study here: http://www.time.com/time/health/art...1662484,00.html

So basically not only by lowering the immune system, cancer thrives and is actually FUELED by sugar. Interesting.

I'd like to know what her sources are.



Right. I'm supposed to believe this? OK fine. She didn't say anything about smoking.
Just make a fire, and hang your meat near the smoke for a few hours. Perfection.
Or, go to the Amazing Ribs website and follow the instructions. Yesterday I made smoked St Louis ribs with a (de-carbed) Kansas City sauce.
While Mara Betsch was likely eating her fiber and her low fat whole grains, I was eating the most delicious, fatty, unctuous, smoky, salty, porky lushness imaginable. She can dance on my grave if it kills me.

You know, studying carcinogens in lab rats especially designed to get cancer doesn't always translate into actual cancer in humans. I think a healthy human body has a lot of ways of dealing with mutagens.

I remember there was a scare a few years ago about another carcinogen that when they actually did epidemiological studies there was no link to actual cancers in humans.

Another point that is often made around here is that these studies are ALWAYS done on people eating the SAD. It says nothing about how it would affect people on a low carb WOL.

I suspect that in the absence of contant sugar/insulin spiking, these carcinogens are not nearly as carcinogenic. On the other hand, I prefer medium rare...

~Karatepig,

"Eventually, I want to eat all my meat completely raw."

Before you do, read a book called "Catching Fire:How Cooking Made Us Human" by Richard Wrangham. He argues persuasively that we humans have been cooking our meat for hundreds of thousands of years.

Wrangham says that as cooked meat is more digestible, it has allowed our digestions to get smaller, and the resources saved thereby allowed us to develop a large brain.