The Crusade Against Nitrites: How Ideology, Fear, and Political Opportunism Hijacked the Science of Meat Safety

A Scientific, Psychological, and Strategic Critique of the Coalition Against Nitrites in Light of Real Public Health Priorities

By Eben van Tonder, 21 May 2024

1. Introduction

In October 2023, the Coalition Against Nitrites (CAN) launched a Europe-wide initiative calling for the removal of nitrites from all processed meats. Framing their campaign around public health, particularly the risk of colorectal cancer, they claim that scientific consensus demands urgent regulatory reform. The message is emotionally compelling, bolstered by endorsements from medical professionals, media personalities, and a self-declared “cross-party political alliance.” But when one examines the claims through the lens of biochemical evidence, food safety legislation, and regulatory toxicology, the campaign reveals itself to be a house built on ideological sand.

This article follows from the peer-reviewed exposé published on Earthworm Express in 2024: “Peer Review Evaluation of the Coalition Against Nitrites Website Claims”. That analysis demonstrated how CAN distorts the scientific record, fails to contextualise risk, and selectively ignores key metabolic, dietary, and regulatory facts surrounding nitrite use. What follows now is a broader, more scathing academic evaluation. We expand beyond their flawed data and biased presentation to explore the deeper question: Why has such a campaign, so poorly grounded in science, found such traction among political elites, media channels, and even some scientists?

We argue that CAN’s campaign reflects a growing trend in public health communication: the subordination of science to moralising soundbites. Nitrites, essential components of human physiology and long-standing tools of food safety, have become a scapegoat. Meanwhile, real public health challenges like ultra-processed foods (UPFs), metabolic disease, and lifestyle risk factors go largely unaddressed. Worse still, the coalition makes no mention of key facts like the mandatory use of antioxidants in cured meats, the negligible nitrite contribution from ham compared to vegetables and saliva, or the role of nitric oxide (NO) in vascular health.

This article lays bare the psychological, political, and reputational incentives that drive such campaigns. We confront their scientific oversimplifications, challenge their rhetorical strategies, and expose the broader implications of allowing ideology to masquerade as science.

2. The Physiological Role of Nitrites

Few molecules have suffered a fate as scientifically unjust as nitrite. Condemned by advocacy groups as a dangerous chemical additive, nitrite is in reality a vital part of human physiology. It is not merely safe at regulated dietary levels; it is indispensable to core biological systems. The deliberate exclusion of this fact from the Coalition Against Nitrites’ messaging is not a scientific oversight; it is intellectual dishonesty.

2.1 Endogenous Nitrite and the Nitrate–Nitrite–NO Pathway

Nitrite is produced continuously within the human body through the nitrate–nitrite–nitric oxide (NO) pathway. Dietary nitrate, consumed mostly through vegetables like spinach, celery, lettuce, and beetroot, is absorbed, concentrated in saliva, and reduced by oral bacteria to nitrite. This nitrite, once swallowed, either becomes a reservoir for systemic NO production, a molecule critical for vasodilation and blood pressure regulation, or it is excreted (Lundberg et al., 2008; Weitzberg & Lundberg, 2013).

This enterosalivary cycle is responsible for maintaining baseline NO levels, especially under hypoxic conditions where the classical L-arginine–NO synthase pathway is less effective (Kapil et al., 2010). Far from being an unwelcome additive, nitrite is a central actor in cardiovascular homeostasis, mitochondrial function, and immune response.

2.2 Relative Dietary Contributions

The notion that processed meats represent the primary dietary source of nitrite is demonstrably false. Over 80% of dietary nitrate, and thus the overwhelming majority of metabolised nitrite, comes from vegetables (Hord et al., 2009; Bryan et al., 2012). The daily nitrite intake from cured meats (even in regular consumers) pales in comparison to that derived from green vegetables and saliva.

  • One serving of spinach can contribute more than 200 mg of nitrate.
  • Daily saliva recycling can expose the stomach to 5–10 mg of nitrite per hour (Lundberg & Govoni, 2004).
  • In contrast, 100g of cured ham contributes about 0.5 mg of ingoing nitrite, much of which is either denatured or bound to protein.

And yet, CAN makes no mention of these facts. There is not a single paragraph on their site recognising the broader nitrate/nitrite ecology of the human diet and physiology. Their entire narrative depends on treating nitrite as an alien toxin, rather than what it is: a normal, necessary metabolite of human biology.

2.3 Nitrite in Neonates and Saliva

Even more damning to the CAN campaign is the evidence of physiological necessity in neonates. In infants, especially in the early postnatal period, salivary nitrite plays a key role in gastric defence and immune maturation (Sobko et al., 2005). Its role in generating NO in the stomach protects against pathogens. Breast milk, too, contains nitrates and nitrites, suggesting that humans have evolved to ingest and utilise these molecules from birth.

Thus, to advocate for the wholesale removal of nitrite from food without acknowledging its biological function is not just misleading, it is scientifically incoherent.

3. Nitrites in Processed Meats — Risk, Regulation, and Misrepresentation

At the core of the Coalition Against Nitrites’ argument lies the claim that nitrite inclusion in cured meat products poses a clear and present danger to public health, particularly as a cause of colorectal cancer. This position is not just overstated; it is framed with rhetorical sleight, ignoring decades of toxicological data, regulatory controls, and the full matrix of ingredients and processes that render cured meat a fundamentally safe food product when properly manufactured. This section will examine the scientific basis of the cancer risk claim, the industrial and legal safeguards that exist, and how CAN misrepresents these realities.

3.1 Nitrosamines: Conditions and Controls

Nitrosamines, particularly N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA), can form under specific conditions when nitrite is present in the company of secondary amines and subjected to high temperatures or acidic environments. But the mere presence of nitrite does not equate to the inevitable formation of carcinogens.

As early as the 1970s, scientists like Fiddler et al. (1973) demonstrated that adding ascorbate or erythorbate (vitamin C derivatives) to cured meats inhibits the formation of nitrosamines by up to 80–100% under typical cooking and storage conditions. This discovery led to a landmark regulatory change: the mandatory inclusion of such antioxidants in all nitrite-containing cured meat products in both the European Union and the United States (EFSA, 2017; USDA FSIS, 2023).

This is not a minor detail. It is the single most effective safeguard against nitrosamine risk. And CAN’s website makes no mention of it.

3.2 The Role of Processing Variables

Nitrosamine formation is not a binary event. It depends on:

  • Temperature (e.g. high-temperature frying of bacon is more problematic than boiling or roasting),
  • pH and moisture content,
  • Presence of heme iron, and
  • Residual nitrite content, which is almost always far below ingoing values due to binding and denaturation during processing (Cassens, 1997).

Short-cured products like cooked ham, mortadella, and emulsion sausages retain almost no free nitrite by the time they reach consumers. The residual levels are often below 5 ppm, well under the regulatory maximum of 50 ppm, and an order of magnitude below any level associated with meaningful cancer risk in rodent models.

CAN’s claim that “processed meats contain dangerous chemicals known to cause cancer” is thus a categorical falsehood. It misleads the public by stripping the chemistry of context and omitting the very controls that make nitrite-curing a model case in food safety engineering.

3.3 Risk Relative to Dose: The Dose Makes the Poison

Toxicologists and regulatory scientists rely on a well-established principle: the dose makes the poison. Even water can kill if consumed in excess. Nitrosamines do present a theoretical cancer risk, but this risk is dose-dependent, and the levels permitted in food are calculated to remain well below the thresholds associated with statistically significant increases in human cancer incidence (Tricker & Preussmann, 1991; EFSA, 2017).

Indeed, when the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) issued its controversial 2015 report classifying processed meat as “Group 1: carcinogenic to humans,” it did not attribute causality to nitrites or nitrosamines alone. Rather, the designation was based on epidemiological associations between high daily consumption (typically 50g/day or more) and modest relative increases (18%) in colorectal cancer risk (Bouvard et al., 2015). Such associations do not control for lifestyle variables, cooking methods, fibre intake, or genetic predispositions.

Again, CAN ignores all this. The dose-response models, the mitigating factors, the confounders, all omitted. In their rhetoric, nitrite becomes a villain, and the complexity of risk is swept aside in favour of a moral panic.

4. Ultra-Processed Foods — The Real Public Health Crisis

While the Coalition Against Nitrites directs public attention to nitrites in cured meats, the actual drivers of the global rise in non-communicable diseases, including obesity, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and multiple cancers, are not trace preservatives like sodium nitrite, but the unregulated and overconsumed class of ultra-processed foods (UPFs). This disjunction between what is attacked and what is truly harmful raises serious questions, not only about the coalition’s scientific credibility, but about its motives.

4.1 Defining Ultra-Processed Foods

According to the NOVA classification system developed by Monteiro and colleagues (2019), UPFs are “formulations of ingredients, mostly of exclusive industrial use, that result from a series of industrial processes.” These include soft drinks, packaged snacks, sweetened cereals, ready meals, instant noodles, and shelf-stable baked goods. They are engineered for hyper-palatability, long shelf-life, and branding, not nutritional density.

UPFs are characterised by:

  • High levels of added sugars, saturated fats, and refined starches;
  • Additives such as flavour enhancers, emulsifiers, and bulking agents;
  • A near-total absence of whole food matrices or structural integrity;
  • Aggressive marketing, particularly toward children and vulnerable consumers.

Cured meats with added nitrite, erythorbate, and salt do not meet these criteria. A traditionally prepared slice of ham with 120 ppm ingoing nitrite and 550 ppm sodium ascorbate is compositionally and metabolically incomparable to a deep-fried, artificially sweetened, hydrocolloid-thickened snack bar.

4.2 Health Outcomes Associated with UPFs

A growing body of longitudinal and mechanistic research has linked UPF consumption to:

  • Increased all-cause mortality (Srour et al., 2019)
  • Obesity and metabolic syndrome (Monteiro et al., 2019)
  • Higher incidence of colorectal cancer (Wang et al., 2022)
  • Disruption of gut microbiota (Zinöcker & Lindseth, 2018)
  • Cognitive decline and depressive symptoms (Rauber et al., 2023)

These health outcomes are multi-factorial, involving glycemic overload, lack of dietary fibre, artificial emulsifiers that alter gut permeability, and chemical combinations that induce chronic low-grade inflammation. Yet CAN makes no mention of this evidence. Not a word. Not a sentence. Their silence is resounding.

4.3 Misplaced Comparisons and the Nitrite Fallacy

Nitrites, particularly in cured meats, are regulated at microgram-per-gram levels and accompanied by mandatory inhibitors (ascorbate/erythorbate). By contrast, the emulsifiers, stabilisers, and hyper-refined carbohydrates in UPFs are often present at percent-level inclusion rates, with far fewer constraints.

Moreover, ingredients like soy protein isolate, potato starch, and methylcellulose, often maligned by the same health lobbies that demonise nitrites, are functionally neutral. They contribute texture and stability, but in such low quantities (typically under 2%) that any nutritional dilution is negligible. There is no physiological pathway in which 20g of high-moisture mortadella containing 0.2% TVP causes metabolic dysfunction. To suggest otherwise is unscientific.

4.4 If Public Health Were the Goal…

If the goal truly were to reduce the burden of colorectal and cardiovascular disease, the most effective interventions would include:

  • Promoting fibre intake (whole grains, legumes, vegetables)
  • Reducing added sugar and high-fructose corn syrup in drinks and cereals
  • Encouraging physical activity
  • Limiting trans fats and industrially hydrogenated oils
  • Taxing high-sodium, low-fibre UPFs
  • Educating on portion size and caloric density
  • Regulating food advertising to children

The removal of nitrites from processed meats, which contribute less than 5% to total dietary nitrite exposure, ranks nowhere near the top of any responsible list of priorities (Hord et al., 2009; Bryan et al., 2012). And yet, it is the one being pushed with the greatest urgency by CAN.

5. Psychological and Political Motivations Behind the Anti-Nitrite Crusade. Scientific arguments rarely stand in isolation from the human minds and societal structures that produce, interpret, and weaponise them. The Coalition Against Nitrites (CAN) presents its campaign as a neutral, evidence-based public health intervention. But the selective framing, rhetorical absolutes, and conspicuous omissions found throughout their materials suggest that this is not simply a health campaign, it is a crusade, driven as much by ideology and emotion as by science. This section explores why.

5.1 The Psychological Allure of a Chemical Villain

Humans are not natural statisticians. We are storytellers. In the public imagination, a molecule like “sodium nitrite” sounds synthetic, alien, and ominous. This instinctual bias against “unnatural” substances is well-documented in cognitive psychology. Known as the naturalistic fallacy, it leads people to believe that “natural” equals good, and “synthetic” equals bad, regardless of actual toxicological profiles (Rozin et al., 2004).

Add to this the availability heuristic, our tendency to overestimate risks we’ve heard about repeatedly in the media, and it becomes clear why nitrites are an easy target. They sound like something you wouldn’t feed your child. The word alone activates fear. Advocacy campaigns know this. They exploit it. And CAN does it masterfully.

5.2 Moral Licensing and the War on Meat

There is another psychological mechanism at work: moral licensing. For those committed to plant-based ideologies or animal rights activism, portraying meat as carcinogenic is not only convenient; it is vindicating. It provides moral cover for broader campaigns to delegitimise animal agriculture under the guise of public health.

This is particularly evident when one examines who supports CAN: a constellation of green parties, Labour politicians, nutritionists aligned with plant-based advocacy, and scientists with long-standing records of supporting dietary shifts away from meat. The coalition’s silence on nitrate/nitrite from vegetables, on NO physiology, or on antioxidant mitigation mechanisms is not an accident. It reflects a motivated reasoning bias, in which evidence is filtered through ideological commitments.

This is not to say that environmental or ethical concerns are invalid. But to smuggle these agendas into public health discourse under the false flag of scientific objectivity is dishonest and deeply corrosive to scientific trust.

5.3 Political Opportunism

The anti-nitrite campaign also serves a powerful political function. In an era of growing scepticism toward processed food corporations, a campaign like CAN’s allows politicians to appear courageous, reformist, and pro-public-health, without confronting the actual causes of nutritional dysfunction, like socio-economic inequality or UPF marketing to children. Nitrites are a soft target. They can be framed as a corporate relic of 20th-century chemistry. Banning them looks bold but costs little political capital.

Moreover, leftist and populist political movements often gain traction by simplifying complex issues into villain narratives. Nitrites fit that mould perfectly: an old chemical, associated with industrial meat, rejected by “natural” wellness gurus. In this framing, nuance is the enemy.

5.4 Media and the Public Relations Economy

From a PR standpoint, nitrites are “sexy.” They come with an existing fear association (cancer), a link to meat (which is controversial), and a pseudo-scientific veneer (“Group 1 carcinogen”). Journalists love a good food scare, and most don’t have the training or time to investigate the difference between association and causation, or between regulated ingoing nitrite and free nitrosamines.

This leads to a feedback loop: politicians cite media; media cite politicians and scientists; scientists see public engagement as a career asset; advocacy groups claim momentum, and all the while, the actual toxicology is pushed further to the margins.

5.5 Career Incentives and Scientific Signalling

Finally, one must address the uncomfortable but real dynamic of careerism in academia. In the current funding environment, aligning oneself with politically fashionable causes, such as plant-based nutrition, anti-chemical rhetoric, or wellness-oriented public health, often leads to increased citations, speaking invitations, and grants.

It is not unreasonable to suggest that some of the scientists associated with CAN are acting not only from conviction, but from calculation. Taking a hard stance against nitrites signals moral seriousness, ecological concern, and a progressive worldview. But it also signals scientific opportunism when done without proper acknowledgement of regulatory controls, physiological necessity, and dietary context.

6. Scientific Integrity and the Collapse of Trust in Expertise

The campaign against nitrites, as driven by the Coalition Against Nitrites (CAN), does more than distort the public’s understanding of food safety. It actively contributes to the growing erosion of trust in scientific institutions. When scientists, medical professionals, and public health advocates abandon standards of precision, context, and proportionality in favour of emotive advocacy, they forfeit the epistemic authority that their credentials were meant to confer. This section examines how CAN’s approach exemplifies a broader crisis in scientific communication—and why this matters profoundly for public health, policy, and democracy.

6.1 Selective Reporting and Evidence Curation

CAN’s materials present a narrow and highly curated subset of evidence, largely built around epidemiological associations between processed meat consumption and colorectal cancer. As established in the IARC Monograph 114 (Bouvard et al., 2015), this association is modest (a relative increase of 18% at 50g/day) and based on association, not causation. No single compound—certainly not nitrite—is proven as the causal agent.

And yet, CAN frames its campaign as if the causal chain were closed. There is no discussion of:

  • Confounders such as fibre intake, alcohol use, BMI, or lifestyle factors;
  • Differentiation between nitrite-preserved and non-nitrite processed meats (many of which were included in the IARC studies);
  • Animal models that failed to replicate human epidemiological findings under realistic dose scenarios (Mirvish, 1995).

This selective silence is not neutral. It is the scientific equivalent of lying by omission.

6.2 Misuse of the IARC Classification

A particularly egregious move by CAN is the unqualified invocation of IARC’s Group 1 classification of “processed meat” as carcinogenic to humans. To the public, this reads as: Processed meat causes cancer. Nitrites cause cancer. But IARC classifications are based on hazard, not risk. That is, they evaluate whether a substance can cause cancer under some conditions, not how likely it is to do so in real-world dietary exposures.

This nuance is fundamental in toxicology and public health. Sunlight, alcohol, and working as a hairdresser are also Group 1 hazards. Yet CAN gives no context, no qualification, no explanation of dose, threshold, or population-level attributable risk. This is science reduced to sloganeering.

6.3 What Has Been Removed from the Conversation?

When CAN excises entire domains of scientific knowledge from its narrative, NO physiology, antioxidant mitigation, vegetable nitrate exposure, it performs a rhetorical trick: it reclassifies complexity as simplicity. By isolating nitrites from their biochemical and regulatory context, they present a molecule that looks far more dangerous than it is.

This is a dangerous precedent. If public health discourse becomes a contest of narratives rather than a confrontation with complex data, we will no longer have science-based policy; we will have policy-based science, driven by the loudest voices, not the most rigorous findings.

6.4 The Consequences of Scientific Complicity

Scientists who lend their name to such campaigns must understand the long-term consequences of what may appear to be a small compromise. In this case, the decision to omit context, downplay complexity, or “err on the side of precaution” in public-facing materials may seem benign. But it reinforces a culture in which scientific authority is judged by alignment with ideological causes, not by clarity, balance, and transparency.

This is not just a betrayal of the scientific method. It is a betrayal of the public, who still look to experts to distinguish signal from noise, and who will rightly grow cynical when they discover that even Nobel laureates can play politics with facts.

7. A Better Path Forward — What Real Public Health Leadership Looks Like

The path to improving public health does not lie in moralising about meat, cherry-picking carcinogenic classifications, or demonising biochemically necessary molecules. It lies in complex, unglamorous, and evidence-based interventions, many of which require political courage, interdisciplinary cooperation, and public education rather than performative bans. In this section, we outline the real priorities for reducing cancer, metabolic disease, and diet-related mortality, and explain why campaigns like CAN’s are not just misdirected, but potentially harmful to those goals.

7.1 Evidence-Based Interventions with Proven Impact

Decades of research have shown that the following strategies are far more effective than targeting nitrites in reducing colorectal cancer risk and improving metabolic health:

  • Fibre intake: Diets high in soluble and insoluble fibre are inversely associated with colorectal cancer and positively correlated with gut microbiota diversity and SCFA production (Aune et al., 2011).
  • Physical activity: Regular moderate-to-vigorous exercise is consistently protective against bowel, breast, and endometrial cancers (World Cancer Research Fund, 2018).
  • Alcohol moderation: Alcohol is a Group 1 carcinogen, with direct links to oesophageal, liver, colorectal, and breast cancer. The same voices condemning bacon are oddly silent on wine.
  • Smoking cessation: Tobacco accounts for more than 20% of all cancer deaths globally, orders of magnitude higher than any plausible contribution from nitrites (WHO, 2022).
  • Body weight regulation: Obesity is now recognised as a leading preventable cause of cancer. Yet neither nitrites nor processed meats play a causal role in weight gain, unlike UPFs, sugary drinks, and snack foods.
  • Health literacy and community nutrition education: Long-term improvements in public health come from understanding nutrition in context, not banning specific ingredients.

If the CAN campaign were truly driven by concern for cancer prevention, it would prioritise these interventions. It does not. And the omission speaks volumes.

7.2 Regulation, Not Rhetoric

Unlike the largely unregulated space of UPFs, nitrite use in cured meat is among the most tightly controlled chemical applications in the food industry. Regulatory bodies, including EFSA, FDA, and the Codex Alimentarius Commission, have established:

  • Ingoing limits (e.g., 120 ppm for bacon, 150 ppm for emulsion sausages)
  • Mandatory use of antioxidants (ascorbate or erythorbate) to prevent nitrosamine formation
  • Labelling requirements and clear maximum residue levels (MRLs)
  • Batch tracking and random inspection for nitrosamine levels

This is not a laissez-faire chemical practice. It is a scientifically grounded, precision-controlled, multi-decade safety regime. If anything, it should be held up as an exemplar of how industrial food safety can evolve responsibly under public scrutiny. Instead, CAN offers an uninformed caricature.

7.3 Toward Honest Public Health Advocacy

Public health leadership demands something far harder than slogan-making: it demands telling the truth in full. That means:

  • Explaining that nitrate–nitrite–NO physiology is essential;
  • Clarifying that risk is dose-dependent and often mitigated by context;
  • Teaching the public how to weigh relative risks instead of pushing fear-based absolutism;
  • Refusing to allow ideological agendas, be they anti-meat, anti-corporate, or otherwise, to colonise scientific communication.

There is no shame in advocating for sustainable diets or ethical agriculture. But when those ideals are pursued by obfuscating science, everyone loses, not least the credibility of scientists themselves.

8. Conclusion

The campaign to ban nitrites from processed meats, as spearheaded by the Coalition Against Nitrites, represents a textbook case of misplaced advocacy: scientifically selective, politically motivated, and strategically curated to provoke public fear rather than educate it. It ignores the physiological necessity of nitrites, the regulatory safeguards already in place, the negligible dietary contribution of nitrite from meat compared to vegetables and saliva, and the protective role of ascorbate in blocking nitrosamine formation. It makes no attempt to contextualise risk or to distinguish between hazard and exposure.

Most damningly, it elevates a relatively minor food ingredient, already safely managed within modern meat processing, into a national health threat, while simultaneously ignoring the actual, quantifiable drivers of diet-related disease: the overconsumption of ultra-processed foods, sedentary lifestyles, alcohol misuse, low fibre intake, and metabolic dysfunction.

This campaign is not science. It is ideology, performance, and opportunism, wrapped in the borrowed prestige of selective epidemiology and driven by the incentives of political theatre and academic branding. The scientists who lend their names to such movements erode public trust by turning their authority into advocacy, and the result is the continued erosion of scientific neutrality at the moment we need it most.

In contrast, the real work of public health is far less dramatic but vastly more important: education, transparency, and targeted interventions where the evidence is strongest. It is time to end the distraction. It is time to say, with clarity and force, that nitrites are not the problem—and that campaigns like CAN’s are not the solution.

Link to all my work on meat curing and human health. / Link zu all meinen Arbeiten über Fleischpökelung und menschliche Gesundheit.

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