Notes

Food Additives - The Consequences
Food additives, used by mankind for years and years, are chemicals put on foods in the home or by the meals industry to improve 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 also to preserve foods. Although salt, smoke, spices, and sugars have been used moderately for millennia, previously 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 associated with 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 because of regulatory scrutiny. You can find literally a large number of chemical additives found in our food today, and scores of these are believed to be harmful elements. A short discussion of the more popular additives will serve to illustrate potential health problems, and hopefully will help you begin thinking about avoiding these harmful substances:

Sulfites (Sulphites) are employed as bleaching, antioxidant, and preserving additives in food. They are implicated as allergens due to the fact that a typical sulfite reaction involves flushing, dizziness, shortness of breath or wheezing. Asthmatic attacks could be provoked by sulfites and a few deaths have been attributed to their consumption aswell. Unfortunately sulfite sprays have already been widely used on fresh produce to get and restaurants to avoid browning due to air exposure. The huge American favorite, french-fried potatoes, are also treated in this way. As preservatives, sulfites were at once within processed food, alcoholic beverages (wines and beer), and drugs. Even aerosols used to take care of 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 fruit and vegetables. However 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'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 portion of the essential chemistry of soils and plants, and as every gardener knows nitrogen is vital 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 contain the highest levels of nitrates. We realize 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 food supply, but are produced 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 already been used widely as preservatives, especially in bacon and other processed meats. Saltpeter is the best known nitrite with its undeserved reputation because the sex-drive inhibitor. more info is 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 considered to drive back GIT cancer. Vitamin C being an antioxidant preservative, can replace less desirable preservatives in a few foods. Tobacco smoke is the major source of human exposure to nitrosamines.

Salicylates are normal in fruit and veggies. Medicinal salicylates (aspirin) originated from plant sources such as for example 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 among the hottest and useful drugs of all times. ASA is an efficient drug with diverse benefits, nonetheless 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 instance, which are lower in our list of symptom-producing foods.

Food Colors and preservatives have been suspected of producing allergic reactions, and behavioral disturbance for many years, and their exclusion was section of Dr. Feingold's program for treating hyperactive children. Food colors are employed liberally in every commercial food manufacture and are extremely popular in home use aswell. We know that the yellow dye tartrazinea, and the preservative benzoate, can cause hives (urticaria). In the analysis of hyperactive children by Egger et al, tartrazine and benzoate were the most typical substances to provoke abnormal behavior in children, although these were never the only reason behind 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 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 are not known to be toxic or carcinogenic, there is absolutely no assurance that they are 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 forth, tartrazine being FD&C Yellow No. 15. Of the nine colors currently certified, seven can be utilized in amounts consistent with good manufacturing practice.

Monosodium Glutamate, well-known as MSG, could very well be probably the most vilified of additives. MSG is blamed for almost precisely what goes wrong in Chinese restaurants, and several people scan food product labels, rejecting any displaying MSG. Glutamate is really a respectable, normal amino acid however, that's continuously present in all our cells and always obtainable in the blood. One possibility for MSG to do something in a negative fashion within the body would occur with the sudden absorption of lots. In this case, a person may experience a rapid rise in blood glutamate, activating receptors which ring alarms, causing the headache and shooting pains which are associated with MSG. Various other symptoms are commonly reported, including flushing, numbness and tingling, chest pains, fast heart action, abdominal pains, and behavior changes such as for example irritability, hyperactivity, and angry outbursts. In pure form, we would 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 "Accent". Papain comes from Papaya and is really 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 instead of back surgery. The injection is potentially dangerous if the patient has been previously sensitized to papain by ingestion.

Aspartame, a well known popular artificial sweetener, contains two normal amino acids, 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. Issues 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.

As we all become informed and educated about how chemical additives in our foods affect our anatomies, we will be in a position to make smarter informed choices to insure our health and wellness and well being. It really 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 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 learn 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 just about everyone has been searching for. While you're there, have a look at his blog, "Ask the physician", and Well-U!
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