Health Claims

When beef is packed with a gas called nitric oxide, it stays pink inside even after being cooked all the way through—unlike beef packed with other gases—because the nitric oxide binds to the meat’s natural pigment and locks in the pink color.

Mechanistic

Putting a tiny bit of carbon monoxide in the plastic wrap around ground beef keeps it looking bright red for longer—up to five days—better than other gas mixes, because it locks the meat’s natural red color in place.

Mechanistic

Meat from older cows looks darker than meat from younger cows because it has more of a red pigment called myoglobin—but if you wrap it in special gas packaging with carbon monoxide, both types of meat end up looking the same bright red.

Mechanistic

When you wrap beef in a special gas-filled plastic that includes carbon monoxide, it stays bright red longer and doesn't spoil as fast as when wrapped in regular plastic or air-filled packaging—even if the cow was young or old.

Causal

When you package ground beef with nitric oxide gas, it looks kind of dull at first, but over five days in the store, it turns a bright, fresh-looking red and stays that way—just like beef packed with carbon monoxide—because the gas slowly turns the meat’s natural pigment into a stable red color.

Mechanistic

If you treat pig blood with carbon monoxide, it stays looking fresh and red longer in the fridge than regular pig blood—like how some meats are kept looking bright red longer in stores.

Descriptive

If you keep pig blood in the fridge for four days, the kind treated with carbon monoxide stays bright red and looks fresher, while the untreated blood turns dull and fades in color.

Descriptive

When you make pig blood more acidic (like adding lemon juice), it grabs onto carbon monoxide gas more easily — but only up to a point. Once it’s super acidic, it doesn’t grab any more gas than before.

Quantitative

When states require warning labels on foods with dangerous chemicals, food companies start changing their recipes to avoid those labels — because they don’t want customers to think their products are unsafe.

Causal

Urethane is a chemical that scientists think probably causes cancer in people, based on studies in animals and some hints in human data — so it’s best to avoid breathing it in or swallowing it.

Descriptive

In the U.S., stores can treat meat with carbon monoxide to make it look redder and fresher, but no one is required to track how much of this meat is sold or who eats it—so we don’t even know how common this exposure is.

Descriptive

About 1 in 5 pork products you buy in the U.S. have tiny traces of a drug called ractopamine, which farmers use to make pigs leaner — but it’s not harmful at these levels, and it’s legal.

Quantitative

Farmers give pigs a drug called ractopamine to make them leaner, but sometimes they don’t wait long enough before sending them to slaughter—so traces of the drug can end up in the pork we eat.

Descriptive

Companies can say their food ingredients are safe all by themselves—no need to ask the government for permission—just by deciding they’re harmless based on their own research or common use.

Descriptive

When you bake things with a certain food additive called diazodicarbonamide, it breaks down into two harmful chemicals—semicarbazide and urethane—that have been shown in animals to damage DNA and cause cancer.

Mechanistic

When meat is exposed to carbon monoxide, it turns and stays red—even if it's going bad—so it looks fresh longer, even though bacteria might already be growing inside.

Mechanistic

Ractopamine is a drug given to pigs and cattle that tricks their bodies into building more muscle and less fat, so they grow faster and need less food to gain weight.

Mechanistic

A protein called transglutaminase can make your gut lining leaky, letting undigested food, germs, and toxins slip into your bloodstream — which can cause your body to go into inflammation mode all over.

Mechanistic

When you lift weights with your blood partly blocked or using light weights, your muscles might produce chemicals that help them grow—but scientists aren’t sure exactly which chemicals or how much they really contribute yet.

Mechanistic

You don’t need to be sore after a workout to build muscle, but being sore might help you build a little more muscle—scientists aren’t sure how much, if at all.

Mechanistic

When you lift weights, your muscles grow bigger mainly because of the physical tugging and stretching they feel — and scientists think a special protein team (filamin-C and BAG3) might be the muscle’s internal detector that tells the cell to start growing, but we still don’t fully understand how it works.

Mechanistic

When you lift weights or do resistance training, your muscles get bigger — and one big reason is that your body turns on a molecular switch (mTORC1) that tells your muscles to make more protein, though other things are also helping out.

Mechanistic

Drinking alcohol after a workout doesn’t seem to make your muscles break down faster than drinking a protein shake or a sports drink — at least not in the first few hours after you exercise.

Mechanistic

Drinking alcohol with a sports drink after a workout hurts muscle recovery more than drinking it with a protein shake—protein helps a little, but it’s still bad.

Quantitative