This pizza ingredient might increase your risk of cancer — all the sad emojis

Fact: Pizza is one of the best foods ever invented. Dough, cheese, sauce, toppings, seriously what more could you want out of life? Answer: Nothing. But we do know that we probably shouldn’t eat pizza every single day of our lives, because that’s not really healthy. Now, though, we’ve just learned there’s another reason we shouldn’t be eating pizza every single day, and it’s making us incredibly sad. There’s a chance that pizza could be increasing your risk of cancer.

There’s a brand new analysis from the Environmental Working Group that discovered there’s an additive called potassium bromate in many foods. What’s potassium bromate? It’s found in some flours, and helps the dough rise. It’s also considered cancer causing and has been banned in many countries throughout the world. EXCEPT, in the United States where it is still used in many food products, and that includes pizza dough.

The EWG notes in their study that exposure to potassium bromate “increased the incidence of both benign and malignant tumors in the thyroid and peritoneum” and can “disrupt the genetic material within cells.” All of these things lead to cancer.

California is the only state with some sort of regulation on this, and requires that food products containing potassium bromate provide a warning on the label. As for the other 49 states and territories, there’s no warning whatsoever. The EWG has also compiled a big list of all the known foods containing potassium bromate, and the total currently sits at 86 products! That’s a LOT of things we really shouldn’t be eating.  But as of right now it’s still considered a safe additive.

“We urge consumers to exercise caution with potassium bromate and avoid it whenever possible,” said Jose Aguayo, EWG database analyst and co-author of the analysis. So maybe we should start thinking twice before we eat pizza three or four nights in a row.

A full list of foods that contain potassium bromate can be found here, and for now we’ve gotta go cry into an empty pizza box.

(Image via NBC.)