Sunday 12 / May / 2024
Muscat: The risk of developing type 2 diabetes in people who eat processed meat such as sausages, increases by approximately 20-30 percent with every 30 grams consumed, explained an Omani doctor, Dr. Saleh bin Saif Al Hinai, Senior Consultant, Family Medicine.
Dr. Saleh bin Saif Al Hinai said that the most important health problems caused by sausages is that these meats are high in nitrates and nitrites, two compounds that make up nitrosamines that can damage pancreatic cells that make insulin
Al Hinai explained through a video clip on his official account that the World Health Organization (WHO) has classified processed meat, such as sausages, as group 1 of carcinogenic substances. It is a class of substances that has the strongest evidence of being carcinogenic to humans, as does tobacco and asbestos, which fall into the same group.
Dr. Saleh bin Saif Al Hinai indicated that the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) conducted a review of more than 800 studies from 10 different countries to look at the relationship between eating processed meat and colorectal cancer. The agency found that eating 50g of processed meat per day or just one hot dog can increase the risk of colorectal cancer by 18 percent .
Dr. Al Hinai pointed out that the risk of a child developing a brain tumor from eating one hot dog per week is 7 times higher than the risk of developing a brain tumor from using a cell phone regularly.
In the same context, the doctor said that processed meat (sausage) is not good for heart health, based on a 2014 study published in Public Health Nutrition in the relationship between eating red and processed meat and the risk of dying from heart disease. A data set of 150,000 deaths clearly showed that the more red and processed meat they ate, the more likely they were to die of heart disease.
A 2014 study in the journal Circulation looked at data on more than 37,000 Swedish men ages 45 to 79 with no history of heart disease. Men who ate at least 75 grams of processed meat per day had a 1.28 higher risk of heart failure and a 2.43 higher risk of dying from heart failure.
Al Hinai added that hot dogs contain questionable ingredients as people regularly find very strange and even dangerous things inside sausages such as: rubber bands, plastic, hair clumps, glass, insects, buttons, and pills. There may also be other unexpected animal parts used to make sausages.
People must be aware of the danger of eating sausage frequently due to its high levels of saturated fat and salt, which is associated with an increased risk of heart disease and high blood pressure.
