if you are health conscious, here is a sample about food preservatives and additives..one would think twice about buying a grocery item..check the labels..if you don’t understand the ingredients you might probably reading chemical terms used as preservatives or additives..few things i know..sodium nitrate is used in canned goods like corned beef and sardines..MSG or vetsin - a main ingredient to food enhancers like Knorr cubes or Magic sarap or noodles..and here is what i found out on the net..read on
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Preservatives and Additives
Excerpt from NORTH AMERICAN DIET
This is the age of science. A fabricated custom-made reality, competing with the natural, organic world man from which has lived for thousands of years. Yet the living, human cell has been incapable in keeping up with our ever-changing times. The small print on your Twinkies reads more like rocket fuel than food for human consumption with unpronounceable test tube names labeling chemicals manufactured in the cauldrons of industry. There is no doubt that the Twinkie-drug has been a successful experiment in taste-bud delight, their bright plastic husks found in dumps all over the planet. But are there side effects? And if so, do they outweigh the benefits that Twinkies are providing for the millions who have come to depend upon their relief from the drudgery of daily living?
The human body consists of billions of microscopic living cells, composed of perfectly, balanced quantities of water and organic substances. If you have eaten the standard North American Diet for years, without serious harm to your health, it is due to your body’s outstanding resistance. Yet genetic weaknesses may be hidden by youth. The cumulative effect of toxins will increase the risk of becoming a host to disease or premature death. Unfortunately, resistance to disease diminishes as the abuse continues. Disease is like heating a pot of water. When the water becomes too hot, it quickly boils over. The biochemistry of the body will absorb toxins only to a point. There is a boiling point—illness!
We live like no other generation before us. A giant experiment of toxic ingestion. In this game, the stakes are high, it can cost your life. We may consider our way of eating as normal, but the modern diet is about as normal as a test tube of chemicals. The body’s chemistry is recreated by ingesting countless food additives and environmental contaminants.
The toxins in your body have been accumulating since birth and are imbedded in every cell structure and organ. But do not despair, there is an answer. Toxins disrupt the natural chemistry of your body. Remove the harmful elements in your diet, replacing them with health-filled foods, and a wonderful new metamorphosis will occur. God has created the body to be irrepressibly healthy!
Chemicals which have the power to produce mutations through chromosome damage are called mutagens. They cause disruptions of the genetic code which are responsible for over 15,000 inheritable, genetic disorders. Sadly, they may have a drastic consequence to our grandchildren.
The food industry aims at making products look and taste appealing without thought to the products’ nutritional value. Loaded with chemical additives and designed to be addictive, processed food is manufactured first for profit.
All great chefs will tell you that the tangy flavor of lemon juice is a must in enhancing and lifting the taste of fish. In fact, lemon juice is widely used to compliment a variety of popular dishes. But to cut cost and for the sake of convenience, manufacturers have replaced lemon juice with 2-methyl-3-(pisopropylphenyl)-propionaldehyde. An unpronounceable name to add to the estimated three thousand chemical additives which we consume.
Your body has become a chemical depository. Sulfur is used to keep dried fruit fresh. Formaldehyde which is used to retard corpse decomposition is added to disinfect frozen vegetables. The blue shimmer on the surface of luncheon meat is the result of sodium nitrate. Sodium nitrate is commonly used in the preservation of ham, bacon, sausage and bologna to keep meat looking red, when normally, it would have decomposed into an unappealing gray. In the stomach, sodium nitrate is converted into nitrous acid which is suspected of inciting stomach cancer. Germany and Norway have banned the use of this powerful toxin.
Feed for raising chickens contains arsenic to stimulate growth, increase egg-production and give the chicken a yellowed skin. Aluminum compounds are added to baking powder, aspirin, antacids, beer, table salt and antiperspirants. It also leaches into our food and water through cookware, soft drink cans and aluminum foil. It has been discovered in high concentrations in the brain of Alzheimer’s patients and is suspected in contributing to this most hideous disease.
Potatoes may seem untouched by chemicals but because of their bad habit of sprouting, they are coated with the chemical inhibitor, maleic hydrazide, which has resulted in cancer in laboratory animals.
Ice cream producers use propylene glycol, the same substance in antifreeze and paint remover. Carboxymethylcellulose is a stabilizer, used in ice cream, salad dressing, cheese spreads and chocolate milk. It has produced tumors in 80% of rats injected. Yet, the FDA flatly denies it as a carcinogen, for the reason that when it was given to the rats orally, it didn’t cause cancer.
For 50 years, producers have added brominated oils to bottled fruit juice to maintain a look of freshness—even after 6 months of storage. Unfortunately, brominated oils have side effects. They produce changes in heart tissue, enlargement of the thyroid, kidney damage, decrease in liver metabolism and cause withered testicles. Canada, Holland, and Germany have banned brominated oils in the production of bottled drinks, yet they can still be imported from other countries.
New food additives are believed to be met with stringent testing. But due to unreliable testing methods, lack of qualified technicians, expensive analysis equipment, budget cuts and government lobbying by food conglomerates, additives that are marginally carcinogenic, mutagenic, or teratogenic stay in use.
The fetus cannot deal with foreign chemicals. Whatever toxic substances the mother eats flow largely unimpeded into the fetus. Unlike an adult, the fetus lacks protective, detoxifying systems. Teratogens are toxins which harm fetal development. Certain food additives are considered mildly teratogenic.
What toxicology testing cannot accurately predict is the long-term combined effect of 3,000 additives and environmental toxins on children, the elderly, newborn, the fetus, and people with cancer. The combined effect of these toxins on humans is unknown.
The processed food industry loads fat, sugar and salt into their products because they are cheap. They use chemicals to change these cheap, raw materials into brightly-colored, tasty products with a long shelf life. Food producers buy the cheapest raw materials, manufacture the product as quickly as possible, then sell it for the highest price. Good business sense, but, what is lost in the manufacturing is quality.
Before cyclamate was banned, it was used to sweeten drinks such as Cool-Aid which contained 28.5% of this substance. It was discovered that 30% of humans converted as much as 40% of the cyclamates ingested into Cyclohexylamine which produces chromosome damage in animals, a high rate of still-born young, and birth defects. It was then banned. Lipton donated its artificially sweetened product to mental hospitals and prisons in Ohio where it was accepted without question. It seems as if food companies will do just about anything to enhance the taste and textures of their products. The aim is to increase the pleasure of eating even if it means compromising nutritional value.
MONOSODIUM GLUTAMATE
A common example of the thousands of chemicals used in our new high-tech foods is monosodium glutamate. MSG is like glutamic acid, an amino acid that is used in the function of the brain. Dr. John W. Olany of the University School of Medicine, in St. Louis, decided to test MSG by injecting it into infant mice. After the MSG injection, nerve cells, especially in the hypothalamus, became dramatically swollen. Within several hours, these cells died. It was discovered that the enzymes which help to metabolize MSG in adults do not exist in infants. It is suspected that instead of the nutrient glutamic acid, MSG is carried to the brain, causing a dangerous excess. When his report was published, Gerber, Beech-Nut, and Heinz took monosodium glutamate out of their baby foods., Naive mothers fed MSG to their babies believing that these trustworthy companies would never put something harmful into their baby’s foods.
At present, the average consumer eats over one gram of MSG per day. When pregnant women eat MSG, it crosses the placenta. MSG fed to growing rats, reduced their growth rate by 16%. The effect on the human fetus is still unknown!
FOOD COLORING
Synthetic color adds nothing to nutritional value. Numerous colors have been banned after twenty years on the market, only to discover that they were carcinogenic.
All certified food colors in use today are of a class of chemicals called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons that are universally suspect as carcinogenic. The FDA argues that food coloring is safe because it causes cancer only when injected into rats, not when they are feeding on it. Therefore, the FDA gives manufacturers the freedom to use food coloring at their discretion. Children are attracted to bright colors. Fruit loops, gum balls, popsicles and fruit drinks are mostly color and sugar. The food industry is making millions on selling chemical substances that have zero value to life.
On the Island of Nauru lived a small group of healthy and happy Polynesians. These people were left undisturbed until it was discovered that part of the island contained huge quantities of bird dung, containing valuable phosphates that can be used in fertilizer. The native islanders grew wealthy by selling this resource and with their new-found money supply they imported foods from the industrialized nations. The flavor of the North American diet cost them 1/3 of the Naurauns developing diabetes.
EARTH ADDITIVES
The Great Lakes is the largest body of fresh water in the world. A global treasure. People living by the Great Lakes have at least 30 contaminants stored in their body fat such as mercury, dioxin, and PCBs. According to Dr. Andrew Gilman, Manager of the Great Lakes Health Effects Center, health problems from contaminants around the lakes are affecting some residents. The most susceptible to these poisons are the elderly, new-born, children, fetuses and those in ill health. Women who drink water from the Great Lakes had a significantly higher rate of mouth and thyroid cancer.
I know what you’re thinking. How can all this be true, in light of the fact that many seem to live in generally, good health? I mean, if everything that we eat, drink and breathe are loaded with poisons, how can the world be full of seemingly healthy people? It would be appropriate right now to bow your head in humility and awe at the wondrous body that God has created for you. Truly, it seems able to endure overwhelmingly hostile conditions and still survive. But God’s best is not survival, only keeping one step ahead of illness. He wants you to experience the fullness of all His blessings, physical and spiritual. Everything which God makes sparkles with Life.
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Dyes, bleaches, antioxidants, preservatives, chemical flavors, buffers, noxious sprays, alkalizers, acidifiers, deodorants, moisteners, drying agents, expanders, modifiers, emulsifiers, stabilizers, thickeners, clarifiers, disinfectants, defoliants, fungicides, neutralizers, anticaking and antifoaming agents, hydrolyzers, hydrogenators, herbicides, pesticides, synthetic hormones, antibiotics, steroids and four thousand other drugs that just make your mouth water with anticipation.
They find their way into the human food chain and become the raw materials for every cell of your body. They disrupt the natural chemistry resulting in cancer, diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease, allergies, diverticulitis, emphysema, stomach ulcers, premature aging, impotence, hypoglycemia and arthritis. These countless diseases exist because chemically-synthesized substances disrupt the bio-chemistry of hundreds of billions of microscopic living cells which make up the body.
The life of most cells is short; new cells are constantly being made to replace dead ones. The raw materials for this rebuilding come from the blood stream. When it contains toxins, the process of rebuilding cells is disrupted. Resistance to disease diminishes. If you have a genetic weakness and continue to eat processed foods, the cumulative effect of toxins will increase the risk of becoming a host to disease or premature death.
Thank God, the Good Shepherd that He is still in the business of leading His sheep to green pastures and still waters.
