How Additives Banned Everywhere Else Still End Up on Your Plate
Have you ever looked at the back of a food package and felt like you were reading a chemistry text written by the Prince of Darkness? I surely have. But this may not just be a case of my personal Batman villain paranoia; the food we eat is seemingly full of banned substances that other countries with even half-decent regulatory systems don’t allow. And yet, here in America, we’re apparently fine with consuming such “food,” which is bad for us in ways that are hard to even fully understand. We can’t really argue that the ingredients we do understand are making us any skinnier, either, given that most of them are the same things our parents and grandparents used to ensure that we didn’t snack on “10.5 grams of protein from real peanut butter” after school.
This infographic requires deconstruction if we are to understand what is occurring with our mealtime mingling. The outcome isn’t pretty, and it has several grim components. “What’s Happening with Our Dinner Tables?” might be answered better by considering a series of related questions:
Brominated Vegetable Oil
Brominated vegetable oil (BVO), or as I prefer to label it, “Satan’s sweat,” is used in beverages to keep flavors from separating. How noble of them. What they don’t promote is that this stuff is also a flame retardant. So yes, it’ll stabilize your soda and maybe your furniture, but it also messes with your thyroid and could give you skin lesions.
Japan and many countries in the European Union have banned it, yet in the U.S, it’s still a part of Mountain Dew’s recipe. What’s the alternative? You can stop drinking it for one. You can also reach for any number of substitutes: sodas flavored with citric acid and otherwise safe acids. Or you could just drink water.
Butylated Hydroxyanisole (BHA): The Snack Preservative That Won’t Quit
BHA isn’t a food additive but is instead a pledge to keep your nuts, bolts, and electronics tasting like anything but fresh while allowing us all to live forever. You find this stuff in chips and gum and cereal, and it’s supposed to keep these foods tasting fresh while they hang out on the shelf. But in reality, BHA has been linked to cancer and hormone disruption, so of course, the EU and Japan have yanked it out of their food supply.
In America, however, it is still an ingredient in your Frosted Flakes. Swap your awful snacks for nuts, seeds, or fruits. They are an entirely satisfactory substitute and won’t pay off for your oncologist.
Potassium Bromate: Bread’s Toxic Best Friend
Potassium bromate is a bread-dough strengthener. Potassium bromate is a carcinogen. EU, Canada, Nigeria, and South Korea’s favorite target for food-supply elimination – potassium bromate. Potassium bromate is an essential ingredient in U.S. bread.
What’s the other option? Buy loaves of bread that are made without ascorbic acid, or make it yourself. Yes, this requires a bit of effort, but at least you won’t be slicing into a loaf that could have your name written all over it in the cancer category.
The Brand Scoreboard
Several companies are stepping up to clean up their acts like Panera Bread, Whole Foods, and Chipotle are being forthright. Brands like Kraft and General Mills are making a move but still have some shady pasts. The majority? They’re way behind, clinging to their nasty mixes like small children to their comfort objects.
Artificial Colors: Turning Your Food Into an Art Project
Here are colors of lipstick, not components: Red 40, Yellow 5, and Blue 1. But guess what? They’re in your breakfast, your sweets, and pretty much everything your children love. The EU slapped warning labels on these hues in food or just banned them because they’re linked to making kids, you know, act out and to cancer.
However, in the United States, we display the flag of that tricolor, it and unfurl it with pride, showering it all over the place. We could substitute anything with a little less visual pop to color our confections. Juice from beets or turmeric could tint our treats. They might not be as visually show-stopping as the dye jobs we’re doing now, but at such a time, it might be nice to conserve your liver health.
rBGH and rBST Containing Hormones for Your Milk
This is a fun topic rBGH and rBST. They are synthetic hormones that are given to dairy cows to boost milk production. That’s marvelous if you’re in the dairy business, but it’s not so marvelous for the cows or for the humans consuming their milk. Milk from cows treated with rBGH is more likely to cause tumors and cancers than is untreated milk. Even if those hormones somehow were perfectly harmless to humans, they would still be bad for the cows. Can giving cows synthetic hormones be good for them?
The EU, Canada, and Japan told Big Dairy to take a hike. We, however, are still chugging it down here in America. The solution? Drink milk. Seek out milk that isn’t unlabeled; if you find a way to ensure that the milk is coming from cows that have been treated humanely, go for it. As a supplement to having your insides coated with a mass of curdled enzymes, milk is not a substitute for a kindness that extends to a more sustainable world for all.
Shopping Tips & How to Stop Poisoning Yourself
The hard fact is this: To shun these prohibited additives, you have to shop shrewdly. Your surest route is whole foods. Even then, you have to do some sleuthing. Examine labels with the intensity of a gumshoe looking for a grimy suspect. When you can, opt for organic, because at the very least, you can count on those foods not being supplemented with black-market chemicals. And keep in mind: If all this label-watching makes you feel like you’re about to go bankrupt, think of it as staving off a few kidney stones that would otherwise be hitting your savings account.
There it is, folks: a list of the things poisonous to your food, provided by companies that care more about profit than about your survival. Other countries have received the message. But here in the United States, we’re still apparently busy being the subjects of the world’s largest science experiment. And guess what? We’re the experimental subjects. Enjoy your meal!
