The health risks associated with cured meat is not the cured meat. The problem may be what it is eaten with. Most low carbers or paleo folk will eat it with vegetables or other protean sources. The majority will eat it with bread and assorted other processed carbs. Any health problem association is probably due to eating the cured meat with bread and soda.
The pizza crust and soda is the problem not the peperoni.
I am not advocating a processed meat diet. Fresh meat is better; however, the amounts or processed meat a normal person would eat should have no effect on a normal person.

Ode to Pork

I was not so very big,
When I started eating pig.

Even though I am a Jew,
I did what I wanted to.

Now I'm old and still eat bacon,
I hope I will not be forsaken.

Thank you.

Well just don't spit in your own food then!

Anyone else remember the George Carlin "newscast" item where he solemnly tells his viewers that a new study has concluded that saliva causes stomach cancer, but only when swallowed in small amounts over a long period of time.

A prophet of human health!!

"My religion is atheism, with a side of bacon."

I just have to call out this comment for its awesomeness. You get extra points any time you can offend both theists and vegans in one pithy sentence.

I eat paleo and I eat a ton of bacon (my wife and I go through 3 packs a week easy), but the dirty little secret for people who push the "calories don't matter" stuff beyond its useful limits (which is the body can regulate SOME surplus calories by increasing NEAT and thermogenesis if the calories aren't from carbs) and like to brag that they eat bacon and are still lean is that bacon just isn't all that caloric.

A whole box of the Hormel's natural bacon is only like 450 calories. And that means eating all the grease as well (which I do, of course).

Most low-carb "I eat bacon, I am so wise to the bad science recommending carbs!" types still just don't eat that many calories. I want to see a sedentary person who eats low carb who eats the kind of daily calorie intake my obese southern relatives do (4000+) and still stays lean.

Now, of course, few people would be able to eat that much if they ate no carbs, but that is a different argument than "calories don't matter".

If you don't burn glycogen, don't eat carbs, if you do, eat just enough to replace your glycogen and no more. And only if you do high volume, high intensity exercise do you burn much glycogen (most people aren't in good enough shape to maintain cal/min calorie demands long enough to burn too much glycogen).

And, I should add, for those of us with 4000 calorie a day calorie damands, where we eat 4 times the portion size of everything as normal people, we are getting 4 times the sodium. When I "eat bacon" it is a box in one sitting. I don't like how 5g of sodium nitrate makes me feel. I doubt it is "bad for me" in some disease state sense.

My only problem with vegans is when they conflate two separate questions - whether eating meat is good for us and whether eating meat is moral. As in so much of life, something being good for me doesn't necessarily make it good in itself. The nutritional virtues of meat and the moral virtues are two completely and utterly separate questions and the fact that opponents and supporters of human omnivorousness alike tend to find happy convergence between these questions shows the lawyerly nature of human reason.

Having been both an atheist (randroid) and a vegan (macrobiotic) in my mis-spent youth. I find that I am not offended, but rather, pleasantly amused by the we(blog) host's beautiful one-liner. After all, what rational soul could be offended by bacon.

However, now that I have reached a man's estate, I have put off my immature beliefs, and have now acquired a whole new set of the same.

I think even if bacon were the meat equivalent of crack I'd indulge.

"And, I should add, for those of us with 4000 calorie a day calorie damands"

Wow that's a lot of calories. Are you a power lifter?

It is not nitrites and nitrates that are of concern, but the frying of protein with nitrites that can cause nitrosamines that is worrisome.

I am very concerned by the way cruelty is a necessity for optimal health (and is selected for by evolution generally) and I don't happily conclude that what I do (that is, eat meat) is not a moral problem from a suffering reduction point of view. Too bad most vegans can't see these as separate questions and foolishly think there is a happy convergence between good for me and good in itself.

Distance runner. 42 years old, 6'4" and 160, 7% bodyfat, can bench my weight 10 times, 80 miles per week. 3500-4000 calories a day. About 30-40% carbs at most (which is low for distance runners who generally labor under the "high carb" delusion). I follow Cordain's "paleo for athletes" guidelines. He and Sisson have good recommendations for the special carb needs of endurance athletes (since we do something novel in evolution, which is burn our "emergency" glycogen on a daily basis). I have a cheat day each week, but otherwise my carbs are fruit, yams, and small servings of white rice as needed.

Preaching paleo to runners is tough.

Last night a good paleo dinner of 2 yellow yams, 2/3 a pack of Hormel naturals bacon fried with kale, 3 eggs, a can of tuna, an avacado, 5 celmentines, and 6 squares of 90% cacao chocolate. I am the rare runner who never eats pasta, or pretty much wheat of any kind save sometimes on my cheat day (pizza is my usual cheat).

"My only problem with vegans is when they conflate two separate questions - whether eating meat is good for us and whether eating meat is moral."

Exactly. And this goes both ways--plenty of people attempt to justify eating meat in the most ridiculous ways: "But vegetables feel pain too!" And both sides are deadlocked in arguing over whether humans were "meant" to eat meat or not. I say who cares? You don't have to justify what or how you eat; "It tastes good and my body responds well" is reason enough for what should be a highly personal and unimportant decision.