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Supermarket
Invasion: Food Additives
MIND MAGAZINE | You go out
to the grocery store, and you buy the weekly groceries you need. Of
course, you don’t have all the time in the world to cook, so you buy
prepared products like soups, pizzas, salad dressing, pasta sauce, etc.
Then you look at the ingredients list. There are a lot of things on
there that you didn’t think you’d paid for: like weird extracts or
Butylated Hydroxyanisole (BHA) and ascorbic acid. These are all food
additives, and everyone consumes them, because they are in almost every
product in a supermarket. The real story of what you eat is not on the
pretty picture in front of the box. The truth is out there… on the label
that is.
Food additives are everywhere in your kitchen. From vegetables to meat,
almost all foods are filled with a certain quantity of additives. Those
chemicals have different roles, but the main types are used for
colouring, flavouring, freshness prolonging, stopping oxidation (used on
fruits so that they don’t turn brown after the first bite) and
substitutes to fat and sugar. All additives have to go into a
standardized process for approval to human consumption. The tests are
conducted by government agencies, and their purpose is to eliminate
harmful additives that cause diseases and allergies. The problem is that
those tests can’t simulate all of the possible “real-life” effects, like
long-term consumption or combination with additives from other food.
Dangerous food additives are often spotted by external research,
motivated by illnesses caused by food consumption.
Still, most food additives are 100 per cent safe for you, and some are
just plain essential: ascorbic acid (a.k.a. Vitamin C) in apple juice
and iodized salt has saved millions of children from bone malformation
in third world countries. Some colorants, although hardly ever used, are
still unsafe. Blue 1, Blue 2, Green 3 and Red 3 are all colorants
suspected to cause diseases like brain and bladder cancer or thyroid
gland malfunctions. Those colorants can be found in various candies and
baked goods.
Artificial Colorants are special chemicals that have no taste and have
the only purpose to give the food you eat a more attractive
presentation. But some of them can be cancerous if consumed in excessive
quantities. Some products containing artificial colorants causing cancer
on test animals are widely found in supermarket because there are no
sufficient proofs linking to human health hazards. For example, sodium
nitrite – used to colour and preserved bacon, ham and sausage – have
been linked to cause cancer for children and pregnant women. Although
the risk is relatively small, having a better diet is even more
appropriated, since sodium nitrite is used in unhealthy food to start
with.
One well-known additive is Olestra, now infamous for its tendency to
make people run to the washroom after finishing a bag of chips. It is
the not-so-magic ingredient in fat free chips and cookies. Everybody
knows about the long warning at the back of the bag saying things like
“this product can cause diarrhoea and abdominal pain”, etc. However,
even though the product is perfectly safe, it has almost vanished off
the shelves of supermarkets because Olestra made people sick. It was
also noticed that Olestra makes it hard for your body to absorb vitamins
and other nutrients from fruits and vegetables.
Yet, above colorants and fat substitutes, sugar substitutes are the most
harmful to your body. By far the most common sugar replacement on the
market, Saccharin, is known for having high ties with cancer. Research
was conducted in the seventies in the Unites States and it was proven
that it caused cancer to animals. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
then decided to ban the production of Saccharin - which is a product
nearly 350 times sweeter than sugar - for general consumption. Yet
Congress intervened and annulled the FDA’s decision, but mandated that a
warning must be on every bag of saccharin. The decision to authorize
widespread consumption of Saccharin seems rather not logical given all
the bad reputation of artificial sweets, yet today’s most popular sugar
substitute –Sweet N’ Low- is made of saccharin.
The fact that so much artificial content is found in our daily
alimentation should raise a bit of attention to us all; food is after
all essential, and making sure it is as safe as possible is a serious
matter. So make sure you check the side of the boxes you are putting in
your grocery bag next time you are at the grocery store, just to make
sure you know what you are getting into.
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