Secondhand Food Smoke

Dr Michael Greger of nutritionfacts.org is one of the leading authorities on nutrition's role in health (and also the lack thereof). His team analyses every English language peer-reviewed scientific paper published every year and reports on the findings.

One of his more worrying alerts from 2013 is about the dangers around the braai place, or from grilling certain foods. Some people love the taste of smoke-flavoured food, but could it be unhealthy, even cancer-promoting? Apparently so.

"The polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in the vapours released from cooking meat may be hazardous for fetal development, and increase the risk of cancer," says Greger in his article Meat Fumes: Dietary Secondhand Smoke.

He goes on to say: The last time I talked about this study was in the context of the carcinogens in the smell of frying bacon - the ability of the fumes generated by frying meat to mutate DNA, potentially explaining both the “increased risk of respiratory tract [cancer] among cooks” as well as the “lower proportion of deaths from respiratory diseases and lung cancer among vegetarians.”