Can grilled foods give you cancer?
Like many people, I had heard rumors (mainly in the form of the headlines of articles I did not read) that grilling foods might cause cancer. But I had dismissed it as being another example of the alarmist nature of the 24-hour news cycle. ("Everything is going to kill you! 12 weird ways your food is toxic! Steak is cancer, you won't believe why!")
The culprit in grilled foods is polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) which are emitted by burning gas, wood, and charcoal. PAHs are extremely carcinogenic. When the PAHs get stuck to your food, they can form nitrated PAHs which are even more carcinogenic.
(PAHs may be formed when meats are cooked in a skillet or fried, as well. The jury is still out on that.)
But how much risk is there really?
Turns out there is a very strong correlation between how often you eat grilled or smoked meat, and how likely you are to develop stomach cancer. In communities in Japan, Russia, and Eastern Europe where food is frequently smoked as a means of preservation, gastric cancer rates are through the roof. It's a solid link, but you have to eat A LOT of smoked food for this to become a problem.
There are better reasons to avoid smoked foods: they are usually high in nitrites, which are terrible for you, and salt, which (although demonized unfairly) is not great for you either.
This Slate article wants you to give up grilling. But everything we do carries some risk of cancer. If you eat grilled or smoked meat at least once a day, you might want to back that off. Once a week? Once a month? Twice a year? It's hard to say.
Everyone has to manage their own risk of acceptable exposure. There is a clear link between cancer and grilled meat, but there are clear links between cancer and sun tans, or living in a city, or working in an office with a laser printer and cancer, and people do those things, too.
Image courtesy Flickr/Another Pint Please...