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| |  Beware Eating Too Many Sausages LONDON -- September 3, 1997 -- Nitrates used to colour and preserve cured meats could destabilise the body’s oxygen supply with potentially fatal results if eaten in sufficient quantities, finds a report in Postgraduate Medical Journal. A 58-year-old man collapsed at a summer party after having eaten 10 sausages within 20 minutes. He had no heart disease or serious medical condition, nor was he taking any medicine. The host of the party, a doctor, found the man’s blood pressure to be extremely low, but it returned to normal within a couple of minutes. The man recovered completely after 10 minutes. The author suggests that the high nitrate content of the sausages might have caused the sudden drop in blood pressure. The sausages the man had eaten each contained 150 parts per million of nitrate; the safety limit is 200 parts per million. The author stresses that although this is a rare complication of eating sausages, the man in question might have been fortunate to escape so lightly. Nitrate is converted to nitrite in the body. This can subsequently convert to methaemoglobin, which displaces oxygen in the blood, and if severe enough, can result in death.
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