Weekend Health Clinic: Cooking on the Grill
on December 5th, 2004 at 11:59 amOh my Jesus! I hesitated to post this one, but it is still information that we can all benefit.
Now I love to grill, but after finding out this fact a year or so together, I have made some changes. It is at this point I will use Fox News’ tag line: We I Report, you decide.
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A one-pound charcoal-broiled steak, well-done contains 4 to 5 micrograms of benzopyrene, an amount equal to what a person would get from smoking about 300 cigarettes. During broiling, fat from the meat drips onto the charcoal, producing benzopyrene that distills back up onto the meat. Benzopyrene is one of the main cancer-producing agents found in tobacco smoke. In Iceland, where large amounts of smoked fish containing benzopyrene are consumed, there are large numbers of patients with cancer of the stomach and intestinal tract. (From Back to Eden by Jethro Kloss)
There is no need to trip even after reading the above quote. As for me, I just cut down the amount of times I eat food that was cooked on the grill. The one thing about us here in America (as opposed to Iceland), grilled food is generally not our staple food.
This point does make me think about something. Notice the word “charcoal“. Isn’t coal the same stuff that gives miners black lung due to long exposure to it? I know that the properties between charcoal and coal are somewhat different, but there are still some similarities.
Something to think about while we eat our char-grilled hamburgers 
