You Are What You Eat Eats!

For me, bangers and mash has always equated to comfort, the sort of meal you have on a cold autumnal night, snuggled under a blanket while watching TV. For many people of my generation sausages were a staple in our childhood diet as they were an economical meal, we grew up with toad in the hole, sausage casserole and bangers and mash.

However, evidence has been building for decades that processed meat, such as bacon and sausages, are increasing our chances of developing certain cancers. According to research, just 50g of processed meat a day increases the chance of developing bowel cancer by 18 percent.  Any meat that has been cured, salted, smoked or preserved is being classified as being as carcinogenic as arsenic, asbestos and cigarettes and there's a saying: 'every rasher of bacon you eat takes a year off your life.'

Cancer Research have said that a single meat based meal isn't bad for you if eaten in moderation, it's about being sensible and not eating too much, too often. For generations people have bulked meat based meals out with other ingredients, vegetables, dumplings, Yorkshire puddings, pasta, rice......my mother would make a meal for four people with 1/2 a pound of mince.

Increased meat production in recent years has meant that our consumption has grown dramatically, consequently, instead of letting animals graze on the grass that has been their natural diet for fifty million years, we are containing them, exposing them to toxic conditions from decomposing manure where disease is rife, feeding them on an unnatural diet and pumping them full of antibiotics. The animals we are eating are unhealthy and we're eating far too many of them.

The healthiest sausages you can buy are outdoor-bred and organic with a high meat content, that are low in saturated fat and salt, but this doesn't lessen their carcinogenic properties. You are unlikely to find sausages made without nitrates in the supermarket, but local butchers can make them with minced pork, seasonings and casings, without nitrates, like any meat, it's always better to opt for quality over quantity.

 

I like to tray bake sausages with vegetables drizzled in fruit flavoured balsamic vinegar

Delicious served with pasta or sweet potato mash

Drizzling sausages with a little soy sauce and honey or cranberry sauce makes them sticky and delicious (always line your dish with parchment paper) these are lovely with a bean salad

            And the old favourite, toad in the hole, serve with plenty of fresh vegetables

I shall continue to eat sausages and bacon in moderation, what's important to me is the background of the animals I'm eating, if an animal has lived in diseased conditions and been treated cruelly from birth to death (stress is cancer inducing) and pumped full of chemicals, how can anyone conceive that it's ok to eat them? Surely scientists should be looking closely at the way we 'farm' animals now rather than the age old process of curing and smoking meat. And if we weren't intensively farming, people, like my parents generation would eat less of it!

'At home I serve the kind of food I know the story behind.'
- Michael Pollan

Love Donna xxxxxx