Food Additives The Consequences

Food additives, used by mankind for years and years, are chemicals applied to foods in the home or by the meals industry to boost the taste, color, texture, and longevity of food. Salt, sugar, and vinegar were among the first food additives discovered and were used both to improve taste and to preserve foods. Although salt, smoke, spices, and sugars have been used moderately for millennia, in the past 30 years, with the advent of processed food items, there has been an enormous explosion in the chemical adulteration of foods with additives. Food additive technology through research and development has become big business.

Considerable controversy has been linked to the potential threats and possible great things about food additives. Commercial food additives are regulated in the U.S.A. by the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and food additives tend to receive the most detailed scientific attention due to regulatory scrutiny. You can find literally a large number of chemical additives found in our food today, and scores of those are considered to be harmful elements. A brief discussion of the popular additives will serve to illustrate potential health problems, and hopefully can help you begin considering avoiding these harmful substances:

Sulfites (Sulphites) are used as bleaching, antioxidant, and preserving additives in food. They've been implicated as allergens because of the fact that a typical sulfite reaction involves flushing, dizziness, shortness of breath or wheezing. Asthmatic attacks can be provoked by sulfites and a few deaths have been attributed to their consumption as well. Unfortunately sulfite sprays have been widely used on fresh produce in stores and restaurants to prevent browning because of air exposure. The huge American favorite, french-fried potatoes, may also be treated in this manner. As preservatives, sulfites were at once within processed food, alcoholic beverages (wines and beer), and drugs. Even aerosols used to treat asthmatics contained sulfites as preservatives in past times! The increased notoriety of sulfites in 1985 led to new regulations limiting their use, and the FDA has banned the utilization of six sulfite preservatives in fresh fruit and vegetables. Nevertheless the ban still permits manufacturers of processed foods, dried fruits, wines and beer to utilize sulfites, although if these manufacturers are prudent on behalf of their customers, they will voluntarily restrain or curtail sulfite use.

Nitrates and Nitrites - Several chemicals used as food additives are also found naturally in lots of foods. Nitrates and nitrites are ever-present in plants. They form part of the essential chemistry of soils and plants, and as every gardener knows nitrogen is essential for plant growth, thus nitrogen fertilizers containing nitrates are the most abundant agricultural chemicals. Surprisingly, some very beneficial foods such as, beets, radishes, spinach, and lettuce support the highest levels of nitrates. We know that daily nitrate consumption is estimated to stay the range of 100 mg per day.

Although nitrites do occur in nature they are less common in the meals supply, but are stated in the mouth and intestine by bacterial action on protein and nitrates. Their intake is in the range of 2-3 mg each day. Nitrites, usually as sodium salts, have been used widely as preservatives, especially in bacon and other processed meats. Saltpeter is the best known nitrite using its undeserved reputation as the sex-drive inhibitor. The principle concern is the ability of nitrites to combine with amino acids in the gastro-intestinal tract (GIT) to form nitrosamines, potentially carcinogenic molecules. Vitamin C inhibits nitrosamine formation and is thought to protect against GIT cancer. Vitamin C as an antioxidant preservative, can replace less desirable preservatives in a few foods. Tobacco smoke may be the major way to obtain human contact with nitrosamines.

Salicylates are normal in vegetables and fruits. Medicinal salicylates (aspirin) originated from plant sources such as willow-bark methylsalicylate. As oil of wintergreen, methylsalicylate has been rubbed on many cold-stricken chests and inhaled by coughing children for years. Acetylsalicylic acid (ASA), or aspirin, is one of the most popular and useful drugs of all times. ASA is an efficient drug with diverse benefits, but it routinely causes GIT irritation and bleeding. It's a major allergen and causes many rashes and hives and may occasionally trigger asthma. Dr. Feingold postulated that salicylates and food dyes produced hyperactivity in children, popularizing low salicylate diets. Feingold recommended avoiding foods that contained natural salicylates or chemically similar substances. His lists excluded such foods as peaches and cucumber, for example, which are lower in our set of symptom-producing foods.

Food Colors and preservatives have already been suspected of producing allergic reactions, and behavioral disturbance for many years, and their exclusion was part of Dr. Feingold's program for treating hyperactive children. Food colors are employed liberally in every commercial food manufacture and so are very popular in home use as well. We know that the yellow dye tartrazinea, and the preservative benzoate, can cause hives (urticaria). In the study of hyperactive children by Egger et al, tartrazine and benzoate were the most frequent substances to provoke abnormal behavior in children, although they were never the only cause of behavioral problems. Tartrazine is really a yellow food color commonly found in a multitude of manufactured foods. It produces a variety of symptoms, typically within 90 minutes of ingestion, including asthma, hives, generalized swelling, headache, and behavior change (usually hyperactivity). Colors derived from natural plant and animal sources are usually exempt from FDA control in america and are generally recognized as safe (GRAS). Beet pigment, beta-carotene, grape skin extract, paprika, saffron, turmeric, and vegetable juices are examples of GRAS colors. While these substances aren't known to be toxic or carcinogenic, there is no assurance that they're not allergenic or otherwise troublesome to some people. Certified colors are approved by the Food, Drug and Cosmetic act and bear the certification name FD&C Red No. 2 and so on, tartrazine being FD&C Yellow No. 15. Of the nine colors currently certified, seven may be used in amounts in keeping with good manufacturing practice.

Monosodium Glutamate, well-known as MSG, is perhaps probably the most vilified of additives. MSG is blamed for almost everything that goes wrong in Chinese restaurants, and several people scan food product labels, rejecting any displaying MSG. Glutamate is a respectable, normal amino acid however, that is continuously present in all our cells and always obtainable in the blood. One possibility for MSG to do something in a negative fashion in the body would occur with the sudden absorption of lots. In this case, a person may experience an instant rise in blood glutamate, activating receptors which ring alarms, evoking the headache and shooting pains that are associated with MSG. Many different other symptoms are commonly reported, including flushing, numbness and tingling, chest pains, fast heart action, abdominal pains, and behavior changes such as irritability, hyperactivity, and angry outbursts. In pure form, we'd not expect MSG to trigger allergic effects, however MSG products may contain allergenic contaminants from vegetable sources including corn, beets, and wheat. Often MSG is mixed with a standard enzyme (Papain) in commercial food enhancers such as for example "Accent". Papain is derived from Papaya and is a protein allergen, so it's possible that MSG is frequently blamed for the allergenicity of papain. Papain is sometimes injected into ruptured intervertebral discs as an alternative to back surgery. The injection is potentially dangerous if the individual has been previously sensitized to papain by ingestion.

Aspartame, a well known popular artificial sweetener, contains two normal proteins, phenylalanine and aspartic acid and is well tolerated in reasonable doses. The point that combining them produced a sweet taste was a surprise (and lucrative) discovery. Problems with ingesting large amounts might occur in people with known phenylalanine intolerance. In addition, excess phenylalanine could affect brain function adversely by increasing excitability of brain cells and, in the worse case, promoting seizures. Occasional reports of "allergic" reactions to aspartame are surprising since this molecule should not become an allergen.

As we all become informed and educated about how exactly chemical additives in our foods affect our bodies, we will be in a position to make better informed choices to insure our health and well being. It is this author's hope that increasingly more Americans will make healthy, organic, unprocessed foods a more substantial section of their daily diets.

Dr. Brett Saks is really a Doctor of Chiropractic (DC), Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine (NMD), Author, Lecturer and Health & Wellness Coach. Please visit him at his new website, [1] where you'll find out about great new Teleseminars scheduled for 2008, browse products that support your wellbeing and well being, and find services aimed toward health education and information exchanges just about everyone has been searching for. As long as you're there, check out his blog, "Ask the Doctor", and Well-U!