 More than 20 heterocyclic amines have been reported in cooked meats, fish, and poultry, prepared under common household cooking conditions. To do someone's exposure to these cooked meat carcinogens, one could, of course, eat vegetarian, or even just refrain from eating meat for 24 hours. And the levels of the two chief heterocyclic amines drop to zero. So if you practice meatless Mondays by Tuesday morning, the levels of FIP and MEI-QX, one of the most potent mutagens ever tested, becomes ND, non-detectable. Now for a third cooked meat carcinogen, they actually did find some in a few folks, even though they hadn't eaten meat in 24 hours. That perplexed the researchers. Now the four subjects that had quantifiable amounts of IQ45B in their urine after refraining from meat consumption, which is an isomer of a powerful animal carcinogen IQ, they had each eaten cheese and or boiled eggs as part of their diet while abstaining from cooked meats. IQ and several other heterocyclic amines have been reported in fried eggs, so it's possible that IQ45B, which forms their temperatures well below 100 degrees Celsius, may be present in boiled eggs, or possibly other foods containing creatinine, such as cheese. That brought up an interesting side note, though. What about all the dietary supplementation of creatine by sports enthusiasts as a supplement, which turns into creatinine? They speculate that high consumption of creatine supplements could result in the formation of genotoxic heterocyclic amines in the body, a cautionary note for both the vegetarians and meat-eaters alike. Another finding of cooked meat carcinogens in a vegetarian was reported in a study comparing the levels of fit growing out in people's hair. It was detected in hair samples of all six of the meat-eaters they tested, but was detected in one out of the six vegetarians. Now it was low, just above the kind of level of detection, so they kind of dismissed it, suggesting that exposure occurs primarily through the consumption of cooked meats or poultry, and that non-meat-derived sources of exposure are probably negligible, but not if you smoke. Remember, these carcinogens are found in cooked meats, poultry fish, and cigarette smoke. So even if you ate meatless Mondays all the way through meatless Sundays, you can still be exposed smoking cigarettes. Here's a measure of FIP exposure in smoking meat-eaters, non-smoking meat-eaters, compared to smoking vegetarians, and non-smoking vegetarians. So it's not enough to just eat healthy.