My son in medical school studying to be a heart surgeon so he had an interest in this topic from both sides of the issue. He said a lot of this fear is blown out of proportion for various reasons and moderation is the key.
In the US, it is illegal to sell bacon unless it is cured with nitrite however you cannot use nitrates but you can find many companies advertising nitrite free bacon. They get around this by either using sea salt which contains nitrates or they use celery powder which again is nitrate. This is similar to the bacon in your link. Here is their claim.
This bacon is dry cured here on the farm using a traditional family recipe. The dry curing process only uses sea salt and therefore does not contain any nitrates.
But how can this be true if they are using sea salt? Sea salt has nitrates in it.
They get around this just like here because they are not adding nitrates
directly but common sense tells you they are adding nitrates. In fact, you can even purchase sea salts from Italy which give you the analysis showing the amount of nitrates in the salt. If you go back in history you can find where people learned that certain salt deposits were better at curing meat than others and this might explain the differences in Italian prosciutto from region to region and why certain ones must use a certain salt from specific sources.
Whats interesting to me is if the use of nitrates are so life threatening that we ban the use of nitrates in bacon production why then is it considered safe to use sea salt or celery powder in bacon production? Samples of nitrite free bacon in the US have shown them to contain up to ten times the allowable limits of nitrites.
I agree that one should stay away from nitrate in bacon because its unnecessary when nitrite is a better and safer choice but it puzzles me how so many refuse to use nitrite but are so willing to add nitrates to their products thinking it safe just because it comes in an unrefined form and in most cases its added in an unmeasurable form.
Personally, I would rather know how much nitrite I'm adding than leaving it to chance. Just because we understand the science doesn't make it bad. I think by understanding the science of it means we have a better understanding of nature and I think it cool that we can use our understanding of the nitrogen cycle to make our food safe. And as mentioned, by understanding the science we can use measurable amounts so that little if any nitrites are left in the finished product and this cannot be said for the so called nitrate free bacon.
hence remove Nitrite Nitrate, if you follow my logic.
