Well, you don’t have to totally avoid them but it is best to keep track how much you are taking them.

Smoked Meats - I used to love eating smoked or cured meats like ham, bacon, sausages, salami and luncheon meat.
Infact, smoking of food was once an essential method for preserving meat and fish for centuries.

At the end of the last century, it was discovered that nitrite was a crucial preservative, but we are now warned about the harm of consuming too much of these foods. New studies by scientists founded that there are many components in these foods like acids, phenols, alcohols and other cancer-causing substances Though the chemicals would inhibit the growth of certain bacteria and delay the breakdown of fats, however, when smoked or cured meats interact with amino acids in meats during cooking and digestion they would convert into nitrosamines, a chemical reaction that causes cancer.

But then, the risk of cancer from nitrite is actually small when compared to the risk of coronary heart disease as there are too much saturated fats in smoked meats.

Besides nitrite preventing spoilage, it gives smoked meats the distinctive nice pink color called myoglobin, a meat pigment - my yummy breakfast ham….

So just make sure you eat them occasionally and in moderate amounts too and maybe, do like what I do, have plenty of raw vegetables at the side to go with your favorite smoked or cured meats at all times!

I have this tendency to get my fats understanding mixed up sometimes, so I decided to write out about the fats and oils thats supposed to be either good or bad for our body…

Fats and oils are the most important supplements of our daily diet as they are major source of fats and carbohydrates. When it comes to fats and carbohydrates eating, people become excessively conscious about the cholesterol levels in the body. Fats are actually very important, as they are the food supplements that maintain the energy levels in the body. What is even more fascinating is that fats are important for keeping body warm.

Our body gathers energy by burning the food we eat through the process of digestion. The energy produced by the food digestion is utilized by the body for various physical and mental activities.

While energy produced is more than the level of energy consumption, our body stores the additional energy of food in the form of fats under the surface of skin. So, at the time of excess physical activity, this stored fat is utilized by the body to maintain its strength.

The various sources of fats are the various oils which we use daily in cooking and frying our food. However, maintaining a balanced consumption level of fats and oils is very necessary as it is proclaimed by the doctors that only 10% of our daily energy should be derived from fats or in other words fats and oils should be utilized in a quantity which should be as low as 10% of the whole day’s diet.

On a surface level fats, can be divided into two groups - saturated fats and unsaturated fats. Unsaturated fats are the ones, which are extracted from plants, and since they are natural they are supposed to be good for health whereas unsaturated fats are ones, which are extracted from the animal products like meat, milk and cream.

On the other hand, if compared to the unsaturated fats, saturated fats are healthier although they are associated with atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries). Saturated fats increase the blood cholesterol and so doctors recommend their less use in the diet. Actually our body fulfills the need of saturated fats by producing or rather extracting it from unsaturated fats synthesis during the food digestion process.

Yes, it is essential to maintain a healthy level of healthy fats and oils in the daily diet to have a healthy heart and a fit body. That reminds me, I should add more drizzle of olive oil to my salads…