[masraum]

Originally Posted by bkreigsr

Let me know if you suffer any unexpected symptoms - wasn't nitrate and it's derivatives once know as 'salt peter' and routinely added to prison food?
Bill K

I'm not commenting on what WD has been making at all, BTW

The funny thing is that in Whole Foods and regular grocery stores too you can buy all sorts of bacon and other meats that say "no nitrates or nitrites added". All of that stuff is processed for the most part with celery juice or celery juice powder which contains.... nitrates.

http://firsthandfoods.com/files/misc/FAQ%20on%20Nitrate-Free.pdf

Sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite are salts that are used in curing or preserving meat and fish. Sodium nitrate is a naturally occurring mineral that exists in lots of green vegetables, which we (optimistically!) consume all the time. Sodium nitrite is derived from sodium nitrate and is the compound that actually contains the antimicrobial properties that are desired in the production of bacon, hot dogs, salami, etc... In the case of salami, sodium nitrate is added during preparation and it then breaks down during the fermentation process into sodium nitrite, which helps prevent the growth of the deadly botulism bacteria. In the production of products like bacon, ham and hot dogs, which aren’t fermented, straight sodium nitrite is added. Besides preventing botulism, the presence of sodium nitrite provides the characteristic pink color and piquant “cured” flavor to these meat products.

As mentioned above, green vegetables contain nitrates. If you want to cure meat without the pure synthesized form of sodium nitrite, the naturally occurring nitrate in celery can be used. During the curing process, the nitrates in celery powder breakdown into nitrites and provide all the benefits of botulism prevention, bright pink color and that delicious cured flavor. For full disclosure, the USDA does not consider celery powder or any other “natural” form of nitrate to be a curing or preserving agent but rather a flavoring agent.

Our products can be legally and technically labeled “nitrate-*free,” because the brine we use contains no synthesized sodium nitrite. It contains celery powder (and thus “naturally occurring sodium nitrite”), sea salt, cherry juice powder (ascorbic acid), maple sugar and some spices. But to be completely transparent about it, due to the basic rules of chemistry, products that include celery powder do end up containing naturally-*occurring nitrate and its derivative,sodium nitrite.

Some other article that I'd read previously talked about the fact that using the natural sources for nitrates may be an issue because one batch of celery juice could have a very different nitrate content than another and so you could end up buying no-nitrate meats that have levels that aren't ideal or whatever.