Eating processed meat that includes everyone's favourite bacon can lead to bowel cancer, World Health Organisation (WHO) experts warned a few months back. For bacon lovers, this news must have been heartbreaking.
However, there's no need to worry anymore because food scientists have successfully created a new type of bacon that has a reduced cancer risk.
WHO stated that processed meats like bacon, when cured with nitrites, produce carcinogenic nitrosamines when ingested.
WHO even revealed that estimated deaths due to bowel and colon cancer are around 34,000 per year worldwide, primarily because of diets high in processed meats.
Nitrites are used to provide a flavour, give its characteristic pink colour and texture. It also acts as a preservative.
But, the Finnebrogue's Naked Bacon is reportedly free from nitrites. In collaboration with Spanish chemists, British food manufacturers Finnebrogue produced world's first bacon that doesn't include nitrites.
Denis Lynn, chairman of Finnebrogue, said: "The problem with bacon is dead simple. Bacon contains nitrites, nitrites produce nitrosamines in your gut and nitrosamines are carcinogenic."
Lynn added: "Our Naked Bacon is not only safer than any other bacon on the market; it also tops the charts in blind taste tests."
This is for the first time that nitrite free bacon will be sold to people after spending over 10 years in developing the product.
Tory Neil Parish, Chairman of the Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee told The Sun: "It's a remarkable feat of food technology and a brilliant British success story. This is further evidence that the British food industry is going from strength to strength."
Neil Parish added: "UK firms like Finnebrogue are producing some of the best food anywhere in the world.' Chris Elliott, chief of the Institute for Global Food Security, commented: 'Nitro containing compounds, used in the manufacture of traditional bacon, are known to cause the formation of chemicals that have negative health impacts."
