Smoking foods: good or bad?

[Guest guest]

Is there any solid evidence one way or another whether smoking foods is

good, bad or neutral? (I mean smoking foods in the traditional way, with

real smoke, not with a pile of toxic chemical additives designed to

simulate traditional smoked-food flavor and sucker the buying public into

thinking they're eating something tasty.)

I'm starting to get into making my own sausage since it's all but

impossible to find store-bought sausage, even gourmet varieties, without

sugar (particularly corn syrup) and other noxious extenders. Besides, the

overwhelmingly dominant trend in commercial sausage is towards low-fat

imitations, often made with chicken and turkey and cardboard and probably

Olestra and genetically modified partially hydrogenated motor oil, not to

mention plenty of other stuff that isn't particularly tasty and definitely

isn't healthy. I want plenty of delicious, fatty, low-carb sausage, and

that means making it at home, but many of the nicest types of sausage

require smoking.

I live in an apartment, so I'm probably limited to hot-smoking in a

stovetop smoker, but that may not too much of a problem as long as I'm not

going to be giving myself cancer, slowing down my metabolism to the speed

of a slug frozen in amber, or otherwise letting myself in for a huge pile

of medical fun that I just don't want.

Did Price have anything to say about smoked foods?

And if smoking food is OK, are there any sources of organic wood chips and

sawdust?

TIA!

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