Deli is Short For Delicious—But Are Your Pastrami and Bologna Sandwiches Giving You Cancer?

Gastropod

Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley

Science, Food, History, Arts

4.7 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 3 September 2024

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

School’s back in session, and kids are boarding the bus with lunchboxes in tow. Many of them contain sandwiches stuffed with turkey and ham slices, bologna, even salami—but where did these staples of the lunch break, not to mention the charcuterie platter, come from? Long before the 1900s meat-cute that birthed the deli sandwich, preserved meats were a standby in human diets: from dried yak cured in salt in the Himalayas, to pork fermented into salami in Italy, to beef pressed in the saddle and pickled in horse sweat in Central Asia, people all over the world invented ways to make meat inhospitable to microbes, more portable—and even more delicious! But, in recent years, these meats have gotten a bad name: in 2015, the World Health Organization even labeled them a carcinogen. So should you chuck the corned beef for the sake of your health? This episode, join us for a deep dive on the science behind whether your charcuterie could kill you—plus, the story of how cured meats became a staple of American diet and culture, thanks to German immigrants and Jewish delis, military-manufactured meat glue, and some truly orgasmic sliced pastrami on rye. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	The alarming warning from the World Health Organization's cancer research arm that goes like this,
0:08.0	process meets cause cancer and red meat probably does too.
0:12.0	Of course the potential risks of processed meat has been suggested before
0:16.0	but never in such blunt terms.
0:18.0	Process meats are defined as any meat like ham or baloney that's altered by salting curing or some other method.
0:25.0	Most have beef or pork but can contain poultry.
0:28.3	The report says such meats cause cancer.
0:32.0	It's back to school season. Across the land, lunchboxes are being packed and
0:36.9	sandwiches are being made and many of them will contain deli meats, baloney,
0:41.7	turkey or ham slices, even salami.
0:45.0	Which sounds as though it's kind of a problem if in fact Dellie Meets cause cancer.
0:50.1	And Dellie Meets are just what we're exploring this episode.
0:52.8	We, of course, are Gastropod, the podcast that looks at food
0:55.4	through the lens of science and history.
0:56.9	I'm Cynthia Graber.
0:57.8	And I'm Nicola Twilly, and this episode,
1:00.4	we are all about the Deli Meats. Coldcutteri salumi deli meats they're all more
1:06.9	or less the same thing but what the heck are they I mean really what is that pink square or round substance known as deli sliced ham and
1:17.0	don't even get me started on that iconic American sandwich-filling baloney spelled like balonia the Italian city.
1:24.8	Nicki you are not alone in your confusion.
1:27.2	Lots of you have asked us about this topic over the years and this episode we are
1:31.2	going to figure it all out. And though to many, if not most people, deli meats mean those slices of ham or maybe
	...

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