Grilling meat is an inherently dumb thing to do. Here's why: Cooking animal flesh over a hot open flame triggers a series of chemical reactions that yield a meal loaded with carcinogens. Scientists have been warning us about this danger for two decades. Cancer-causing compounds known as heterocyclic amines (HCAs) can form, particularly when cooking animal flesh over high heat, which is common when barbequing. These chemicals – the same chemicals that are found in cigarette smoke – have been shown to cause cancer.

For example, in a Harvard study by Erin Richman and colleagues, results of which were published in March 2010 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, men who ate cooked chicken at high heat with the skin on had twice the risk of having their previously diagnosed prostate cancer return or get worse than those who ate skinless chicken. The researchers' theory to explain these chicken skin findings: The HCAs formed in chicken skin during cooking were the culprit of the cancer relapse.

Is there a solution; a way to avoid filling your body with HCAs? Don't grill your meat (or don't eat meat at all, since research suggests grilling vegetables does not generate HCAs). The trouble with that "solution" is that we've been cooking dinner over open fires for two million years.

Taking pleasure in grilling meat over a fire is so deeply ingrained in our blood that most people aren't about to change.

“Tricks" that may reduce the risks posed while barbequing:

1. Precooking a hamburger patty for two minutes in a microwave before barbequing (reduces heterocyclic amines by 90 percent)
2. Use marinades like teriyaki sauce, rosemary, red wine
3. Lactobacilli strains in yogurt help neutralize these chemicals, so serving yogurt on, or with, meat meals provides additional protection because it actually reduces the harmful effects of these chemicals.

ant sun protection. They weren't paid to write the article, though, and it's hardly a rave review for current sunscreen technology.

In This Issue:
Healthy Produce = Healthy People
Keeping Baby Safe this Summer
Put Another Shrimp on the Barbie?
Spicy Salsa

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