Food and health activist Roland Annan has warned that the frequent consumption of sausage can increase one’s risk of getting cancer.
According to him, synthetic nitrate, which is used to preserve sausage and make it fresh, can cause cancer.
In a recent post shared on X by user X Ghana, Roland Annan explained that there are two types of nitrate in the body, the natural one and the synthetic one.
He further noted that when sausage is cooked for a long time, the synthetic nitrate reacts to nutrients in meat to form nitrosamines.
“When you take the sausage raw, you are good to go because the amount of nitrate has been regulated. But when the sausage is exposed to heat for a long period of time, you fry it or roast it for a long period of time. This nitrate in sausage will react to some nutrients in meat and form what we call nitrosamines. These nitrosamines are carcinogens that may cause cancer.
“When you eat the sausage, which is already carcinogenic, it will attach itself to a cancer cell in you, and that is where it becomes cancerous,” he stated.
He, however, encouraged the public to always add vegetables to sausage to act as antioxidants to help prevent nitrosamines from attaching themselves to cancer cells in the body.
“These days, I have been seeing kids eat sausages. Please reduce the rate at which you give your children sausages. You put it on noodles for them to be eating. One thing about kids eating sausage is that they may later acquire Methemoglobinemia and that is another issue on its own. It is where the blood hemoglobin cannot bind with oxygen, therefore, it cannot transfer oxygen to the other cell tissues in the body. Which is another issue on it’s own. So, please, let us reduce the rate at which we give our children sausages,” he stated.
