Bryan Marcel: Food Additives - A Chemical Cocktail

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
North Carolina, North Carolina, United States of America (Free-Press-Release.com) December 1, 2010 -- If you've been following BryanMarcel.com for any amount of time you know that I am an advocate of organic and whole foods. One of the many reasons that I recommend keeping away from processed foods is that they contain chemicals that should be avoided. The amount of chemicals to avoid, range from a few to an extensive list depending on the product. I randomly pulled a loaf of bread off of the grocery store shelf and counted the ingredients: 42. It takes forty two ingredients to make a loaf of bread? How? Better yet. Why?

Most of those ingredients help extend the shelf life of the product. None of them extend your life. Most ingredients you can't pronounce. If you can't pronounce an ingredient then don't eat it. I buy organic sprouted grain bread that has eleven ingredients. I can pronounce the name of every ingredient and I know what they are. Simple, as it should be. Do you really think that man-made chemical creations are really better for you than what nature has created? More ingredients with long unpronounceable names are not better.

It is logical to assume that all of the ingredients in your food are legal and have been tested. They are and they have. That’s where the logic ends. Although legal, many individual food additives and artificial sweeteners cause adverse reactions, cancer or disease. Many are toxic. The FDA approves food additives to be used at specific levels. They approve them based on tests done solely on that chemical as a stand-alone ingredient. Often it appears that chemicals are approved because of what I call the greater good. For example, nitrites in meat have been shown to cause cancer, but they prevent botulism. BHT causes cancer as well, but it keeps oils and fats from going rancid thus extending shelf life.

The pitfalls of individual ingredients are well documented. I call them ingredients, not food additives as the food industry prefers, because they add nothing of value. What concerns me is how do these colors, dyes, preservatives and other additives interact with each other. The average person’s body contains traces of 300-500 chemicals that didn't exist 50 years ago. They enter our bodies through our food, our skin (lotions, deodorants, fragrances, etc) and through the air we breathe. What happens when they are mixed together into a chemical cocktail? That is the unknown. With all of this chemical exposure it is impossible to hold a single chemical responsible for any particular outcome. It stands to reason though that the introduction of these foreign chemical substances into our bodies is at the least overworking our digestive and immune systems. I would suspect that this is one of the many causes contributing to our increased rates of cancer over the last 30 years. Global rates of cancer are projected to increase 50 percent over the next 20 years. The only approach that a well-informed person can take is to try to reduce their own individual exposure. Staying away from unnatural processed foods and buying organic and whole foods is a good start to a healthier you.
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