Food Additives Worrisome

A while back I purchased a pumpkin pie from a local supermarket. When I unpackaged it at home I read the label and was quite amazed.

"Contains mince etc . . . . natural and artificial flavors, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, potassium sorbate (preservative), carame (color),cellulose gum, mono and diglycerides,sodium citrate, palmitate, sulfur dioxide (preservative), mononitrate, propionate (preservative)." (It's no surprise that those words do not clear my spell-checker.) These were Christmas pies and it was late November. They were solidly constructed perhaps to last through Christmas.

Since then I have been reading the ingredients listed on all food packages to get some idea of what I might be eating. It's scary when I consider the content of some food products I have eaten for many years. But better late than never and I now avoid products with ingredients having unfamiliar names or contents that I consider unhealthy. Even familiar names like citrates and calcium propionate have me concerned even though they are commonly used. Why are they there?

Why does a loaf of bread, baked in-store, contain added chemicals?

Basically additives are there to increase profit by extending the shelf life or enhancing flavor. But which of those strange ingredients in food packages are somewhat unhealthy or perhaps harmful? If not in small amounts perhaps grouped with other products containing the same chemicals and accumulated over time?

Sue Dengate's The Food Intolerance Network site contains comprehensive information on a wide range of additives. There is independent information about the effects of food on behaviour, health and learning ability in both children and adults. Sue is a psychology graduate and author of the bestselling Fed Up series, published by Random House Australia.


Grampa Ken ~ Author of 32 KEYS About Life and Blogger at Social-Fix