What is in Our Food?

Many food items are marketed and sold as healthy, yet they contain so many bad hidden ingredients and are far from healthy in reality. So what is in our food?

 

.. Well, roughly 3000 chemicals that are added to more than 70% of canned, frozen and boxed foods on supermarket shelves.

Industrial revolution and scientific progress helped these artificial chemicals take their place in our foods. So many so-called healthy foods have such flavor enhancers, preservatives and additives that there is probably no way you would recognize them. They are hidden under different names.

 

Now let’s have a look at my favorite (!) and commonly used nasty artificial ingredients.. So what is in our food?

Butylated Hydroxytoluene is often used in breakfast cereals and in transformer oil, rubber petroleum products and jet fuels. It is quite possibly a carcinogen and can cause liver damage if in the environment (it doesn’t even need to be in your food to be harmful!)

Monosodium Glutamate- MSG is found in our bodies, consuming it in foods as well is far from harmless. It is in so many processed foods these days under the names of : Maltodextrin, disodium guanylate, modified cornstarch, calcium casseinate, magnesium glutamate, yeast extract, hydrolized protein, sodium casseinate, monopotassium, vetsin, gelati and more.

What you can do to avoid MSG is to pay attention to the ingredients list of foods you buy and to consume as little processed foods as possible. It really can and does cause a variety of health problems such as nausea, headaches and migraines, skin rashes, obesity, seizures, cancers, Alzheimer, arthritis. See a more thorough list on MSG Side Effects page.

Fructose Corn Syrup contains a strange structure of glucose and fructose. It is proven that it can cause diabetes, cardiovascular disease and obesity. It is made from genetically engineered corn and enzymes.

Enriched flour, as great as it may sound, is a bleached and refined type of flour that causes a spike in your blood sugar levels and contains hardly any nutrients. The iron that is put back into the flour is not the most innocent type, it is metallic!

Propylene glycol alginate- E405 is a common thickener, gelling agent, stabilizer, bulking agent and emulsifier used in cheeses, baked foods, jams, desserts, salad dressings, puddings and jellies. Although known to be safe, it is also used in paint removers, germicides and auto antifreezes.

Salt is essential for your well-being but if taken in excess it can cause asthma, osteoporosis, stomach cancer, hypertension, strokes and heart attacks.  Processed foods are usually loaded with salt. A lot of this salt is hidden, so avoid consuming it as much as you can. To find out how much salt in a food, just multiply sodium content by 2.5. For example, 2 grams of sodium in 100g means 2 x 2.5 = 5g of salt.

Aspartame is probably the nastiest ingredient of all- simply the most dangerous substance, commonly found in sweet diet or sugar free drinks and foods to replace sugar. It accounts for roughly 75% of all food additive complaints to FDA.

Fatigue, joint pain, numbness, breathing difficulties, memory loss, insomnia, irritability, vision problems, hearing loss, loss of taste, muscle spasms are only some of the side effects you can experience with aspartame. Then you have the chronic diseases linked to aspartame, such as diabetes, dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, brain tumors, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s and lymphoma.

 

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