Barbecue Meat - Is it healthy or not ?
We are in the summer time and of course, it's the best season for barbecues! Everybody loves a barbecue I think, don't they? In the end of the spring and during the summer time, It's impossible to see somebody who's not doing a barbecue in my country (Turkey). But I have bad news for you. I'm sorry to say that barbecuing is not a healthy cooking method. When we cook meat at a high temperature, it can produce carcinogenic chemicals which are called PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) and HCAs(heterocyclic amines). We don't know the mechanism completely for how this happens, but we know what these chemicals consist of and they are not good for your health. HCAs and PAHs are cancerogenic chemical products of all kinds of muscle meat e.g beef, pork, fish, poultry... when we cook it at high temperature. These mutagenic chemicals can affect DNA and change its construction. (That's why we called them "cancerogenic"). HCAs are formed as a result of ...