Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Interesting. I'm not a biochemist by any means, but have been doing a little research into nitrites - from a cancer-causing perspective, apparently there is a difference between nitrite additives and nitrites that occur naturally in vegetables. Vegetables with nitrites also contain high levels of vitamins A and C, which it is theorized work to block the formation of carcinogenic nitrosamines in the human gut, explaining why nitrite containing veggies help protect from cancer, while synthetic nitrite additives in cured meats are shown to cause cancer.