Notes

Food Additives - The Consequences
Food additives, used by mankind for years and years, are chemicals applied to foods in the home or by the food industry to improve the taste, color, texture, and longevity of food. Salt, sugar, and vinegar were one of the primary food additives discovered and were used both to improve taste also to preserve foods. Although salt, smoke, spices, and sugars have already 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 is becoming big business.

Considerable controversy has been associated with the potential threats and possible benefits of food additives. Commercial food additives are regulated in the U.S.A. by the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and food additives have a tendency 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 these are considered to be harmful elements. A short discussion of the popular additives will serve to illustrate potential health issues, and hopefully will assist you to begin considering avoiding these harmful substances:

Sulfites (Sulphites) are employed as bleaching, antioxidant, and preserving additives in food. They are implicated as allergens because of the fact a typical sulfite reaction involves flushing, dizziness, shortness of breath or wheezing. Asthmatic attacks could be provoked by sulfites and some deaths have been attributed to their consumption aswell. Unfortunately sulfite sprays have already been widely used on fresh produce in stores and restaurants to avoid browning due to air exposure. The huge American favorite, french-fried potatoes, may also be treated in this way. As preservatives, sulfites were at one time found in processed food, alcoholic beverages (wines and beer), and drugs. Even aerosols used to treat asthmatics contained sulfites as preservatives in the past! The increased notoriety of sulfites in 1985 resulted in new regulations limiting their use, and the FDA has banned the usage of six sulfite preservatives in fresh fruit and vegetables. However the ban still permits manufacturers of processed food items, dried fruits, wines and beer to utilize sulfites, although if these manufacturers are prudent on behalf of their customers, they'll 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 section of the essential chemistry of soils and plants, so when every gardener knows nitrogen is vital for plant growth, thus nitrogen fertilizers containing nitrates will be the most abundant agricultural chemicals. Surprisingly, some very beneficial foods such as for example, beets, radishes, spinach, and lettuce support the highest levels of nitrates. We know that daily nitrate consumption is estimated to stay the number 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 number of 2-3 mg each day. Nitrites, usually as sodium salts, have been used widely as preservatives, especially in bacon along with other processed meats. Saltpeter is best known nitrite with its undeserved reputation as the sex-drive inhibitor. The chief concern may be the ability of nitrites to combine with amino acids in the gastro-intestinal tract (GIT) to create 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 some foods. Tobacco smoke may be the major way to obtain human exposure to nitrosamines.

Salicylates are normal in vegetables and fruit. 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 a long time. Acetylsalicylic acid (ASA), or aspirin, is probably the hottest and useful drugs of all times. ASA is an efficient drug with diverse benefits, but it routinely causes GIT irritation and bleeding. It is 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. check here recommended avoiding foods that contained natural salicylates or chemically similar substances. His lists excluded such foods as peaches and cucumber, for instance, which are lower in our list of symptom-producing foods.

Food Colors and preservatives have already been suspected of producing allergic reactions, and behavioral disturbance for quite some time, and their exclusion was part of Dr. Feingold's program for treating hyperactive children. Food colors are used liberally in all commercial food manufacture and so are very popular in home use as well. We realize 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 these were never the only cause of behavioral problems. Tartrazine is a yellow food color commonly found in a wide variety 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 often exempt from FDA control in the US 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 regarded as toxic or carcinogenic, t here is no assurance that they are not allergenic or elsewhere troublesome for 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 consistent 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 many people scan food product labels, rejecting any displaying MSG. Glutamate is really a respectable, normal amino acid however, that is continuously within all our cells and always available in the blood. One possibility for MSG to act in a poor fashion within the body would occur with the sudden absorption of a large amount. In this case, an individual may experience an instant rise in blood glutamate, activating receptors which ring alarms, evoking the headache and shooting pains that are associated with MSG. A variety of 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 blended 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 may also be 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 favorite popular artificial sweetener, contains two normal proteins, phenylalanine and aspartic acid and is well tolerated in reasonable doses. The fact that combining them produced a sweet taste was a surprise (and lucrative) discovery. Problems with ingesting large amounts might occur in people who have 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 shouldn't act as an allergen.

Once we all become informed and educated about how chemical additives inside our foods affect our anatomies, we will be able to make better informed choices to insure our health and well being. It really is this author's hope that increasingly more Americans will make healthy, organic, unprocessed foods a larger part 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 , [http://www.drsaks.com/] where you'll find out about great new Teleseminars scheduled for 2008, browse products that support your health and well being, and find services aimed toward health education and information exchanges we have all been searching for. While you're there, have a look at his blog, "Ask the physician", and Well-U!
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