Way Meat Is Cooked Linked to Cancer

Like your steak well done? Lots of pan drippings?

Not a healthful choice, says the National Cancer Institute.

The latest research suggests that cooking meat too long--and at too high a temperature--increases the risk of cancer.

And pan gravy? Better not even think about it. Gravy made from meat drippings is high in carcinogens, the researchers said.

Red meat has long ridden high on the list of questionable foods, largely because of its high-fat link to heart disease. But meat eaters are also known to have a higher-than-usual risk of some kinds of malignancy, especially colon cancer.

So researchers set out to see if the way people fix their steaks and hamburgers has a bearing on this risk. Their study was conducted on beef-loving Nebraska farmers--176 stomach cancer victims and 503 healthy people--and is the first to examine this question.

“We found increasing risk with increasing doneness,” said Mary H. Ward, a cancer institute epidemiologist who presented the findings Monday at a meeting of the American Assn. for Cancer Research.

Her team discovered that folks who prefer their meat medium, medium well or well done are about three times as likely as those who eat their beef rare or medium rare to get stomach cancer.

Why? Stuff with the decidedly unappetizing name of heterocyclic amines may be the key. These are carcinogens--cancer-causing agents--and they are formed when animal protein known as creatinine is heated to high temperatures.