With the emersion of processes of industrialization and urbanization along with the increase in population size, rises the need for increased food production. With increased awareness of healthy dieting a large number of people turns to natural food which opposed to most industrial products is less treated so that makes it an alluring option. The use of food supplements, e.g. additives, becomes necessary to preserve nutritional value in food, enhance its organoleptic properties and prolong expiration date. Most commonly used additives such as food dyes, antioxidants, flavour enhancers and preservatives are present in almost every foodstuff but their presence doesn’t signify lower quality of food itself. Abundance of protein, peptides, fatty acids, minerals, moisture and other growth factors make meat and meat products an ideal medium to promote microorganism and bacterial growth. Without proper preparation and storage meat is very susceptible to losing its nutritional value and spoilage. Preservatives such as sodium nitrite and sodium nitrate are commonly used in production, processing and preserving meat products as to keep its nutritional value and achieving satisfactory commercial impact. Considering the presence of nitrates in nature’s nitrogen cycle and the fact that meat, fruits, vegetables, fat and other food contain nitrates and nitrites it’s necessary to pay attention to daily intake to prevent potential health consequences. In this study concentrations of sodium nitrite and nitrate were analysed in 59 samples of meat and meat products collected in Republic of Croatia. Using the assessment method for nitrites and nitrates the concentrations were callculated from absorbance at 540 nm (nitrites) and 340 nm (nitrates) wavelength and compared with the Croatian regulations for maximum levels of food additives. The highest cooncentrations of sodium nitrite were found in heat treated sausages (82 mg/kg) while the highest levels of sodium nitrate were found in dry-cured sausages (241 mg/kg). During the analysis it was noted that only one sample had a negligibly higher concentration of sodium nitrite than it is allowed by the regulations but can be considered as compliant to legislation when taking into account the measurement uncertainty of the applied analytical method.