Bacon Healthy?

We've all seen and been told about how bacon is bad for you, how it, along with other cured meats, can contribute to failing health, well now it's been found that bacon might hold the key (or a least part of it) to helping heal heart tissue after a heart attack. Now I am not a doctor, so do not take my word on anything related to health, but here is an article on the matter from Science Daily.

Recent studies show that administering nitrite to animals, either intravenously or orally, can greatly limit the damage caused by a heart attack and the stress to tissue that follows due to reperfusion--the return of blood to oxygen-starved heart muscle," says Dr. David Lefer, the study's senior author and professor of medicine and of pathology at Einstein. "We wondered if feeding animals much lower levels of nitrite and nitrate--equivalent to what people can readily obtain from their diets--could also provide protection from heart-attack injury

Now I'm sure you are wondering what this has to do with bacon since most nitrites are found in vegitables (I got that from the article). Well...

In contrast to nitrite, nitrate in the diet comes mainly from cured meats such as bacon, sausage and luncheon meats. Consuming nitrate augments our nitrite supply: Once absorbed in the bloodstream, nitrate circulates to the salivary glands where bacteria convert it to nitrite, which is then swallowed in our saliva. About 10 percent of dietary nitrate is converted to nitrite in this way.

Now Sara from Health Bolt warns that the nitrates in bacon are still thought to lead to cancers, so maybe don't over do it on the bacon and stay healthy. The longer you stay healthy, the longer you get to eat the bacon!

Enjoy,

Alexa and the Bacon Boys