Add These Safer Grilling Tips to Menu
Cambridge, Massachusetts, June 4, 2007 – Not the greatest cook in the backyard? Did the smoke in your eyes cause a loss of an entire side of ribs?
Ruining a piece of meat isn't the only thing you need to worry about if cooking at high temperatures. High heat can also produce chemicals with cancer-causing properties, so says a write up in the June issue of the Harvard Health Letter.
When meat is cooked at high temperatures, amino acids react with creatine to form heterocyclic amines, which are thought to cause cancer. That's why cooking meat by grilling, frying, or broiling is the problem.
Grilling is double trouble because it also exposes meat to cancer-causing chemicals contained in the smoke that rises from burning coals and any drips of fat that cause flare-ups. How long the meat is cooked is also a factor in heterocyclic amine formation: longer cooking time means more heterocyclic amines.
Depending on cooking temperature, meat roasted or baked in the oven may contain some heterocyclic amines, but its likely to be considerably less than in grilled, fried, or broiled meat.
Marinating meat is often suggested as a way to cut down on the formation of heterocyclic amines, but evidence that marinating helps is mixed. The folks to put together the Harvard Health Letter suggest some other tips that may make grilled meat safer to eat:
- Cook smaller pieces: They cook more quickly and at lower temperatures.
- Choose leaner meat: Less fat should reduce flames and therefore smoke.
- Precook in the microwave: Doing so for two minutes may decrease heterocyclic amines by 90%, according to some research.
- Flip frequently: That way, neither side has time to absorb or lose too much heat.
SOURCE: MarketWatch; Harvard Health Letter; The Soy Daily staff
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