Jennifer Whitney, CHN, CGP, CHC discusses the health risks of consuming grilled meats and others that we may be preparing during summer months for gatherings, barbecues, and other events.
Researchers from the Danish Cancer Society Research Center in Copenhagen have determined that acrylamide consumption – found with higher amounts in fried and grilled foods – significantly increases the risk of breast cancer among women.
The researchers followed 24,697 postmenopausal women as part of a Danish study between 1993 and 1997. Out of the population, 420 of the women developed breast cancer prior to 2001. Of these, 110 of the women died of breast cancer prior to 2009.
The study gauged the women’s consumption of acrylamide by measuring their acrylamide hemoglobin and glycidamide hemoglobin levels in the bloodstream. The study found that higher levels of acrylamide and glycidamide hemoglobin in the women’s bloodstream was associated with a higher risk of breast cancer.
I’m Jennifer Whitney, the Nutritionist. We’ve been talking about the value of the reduction of inflammation that comes when you lose weight, and when you are staying at a healthy weight.
Not only is it important to continue to eat those foods that help to reduce inflammation, it’s really important to make sure you are cooking your foods in a correct way so that you’re not eating foods that have carcinogenic substances in them from the way that you’re cooking them.
So you really want to avoid deep frying. More importantly, as we’re going into the summertime, you really want to avoid grilling as much as possible. And if you’re going to grill, try to stick to vegetables; primarily because when you’re grilling meats, what happens is grilling forms compounds in the foods that really, when you eat them, cause inflammation in your body. And so you want to avoid those as much as possible and stick more towards broiling, baking or steaming your meats and vegetables as much as possible.
Photo by Zac Cain on Unsplash.