Day 13: Nothing artificial – Avoid all artificial ingredients including,
but not limited to: sweeteners, flavors and colors.
Artificial flavorings are
derived from chemicals made in a laboratory and offer absolutely no nutritional
value and are a magnet for processed foods. They show up in almost everything
today, including bread, cereals, flavored yogurt, soups mixes, and cocktail
mixers, so they can be hard to avoid. Every single artificial flavor in the
food industry has some kind of detrimental health effect. These include
neurotoxicity, organ, developmental, reproductive toxicity and cancer.
Food colouring is a tactic the food industry has used for
decades. From those marshmallows floating in your bowl of milk to brightly
colored orange cheetos, even the most common household foods contain
ingredients such as Red #40 (the most widely consumed artificial dye) and
Yellow #5.
However, the dangers
of artificial dyes are often an issue in food safety, with many claiming them
to be toxic and a factor to the rise of ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity
Disorder) in recent years. Curiously enough, many natural colors previously
used to color food contained toxins such as mercury, and at the turn of the
20th century, companies began to create synthetic solutions to replace harmful
natural dyes.
There are several food colourings still on
the market linked with cancer.
Blue 1 and 2, found in beverages, candy, baked goods
and pet food, have been linked to cancer in mice. Red 3, used to dye cherries,
fruit cocktail, candy, and baked goods, has been shown to cause thyroid tumors
in rats. Green 3, added to candy and beverages, has been linked to bladder cancer.
The widely used yellow 6, added to beverages, sausage, gelatin, baked goods,
and candy, has been linked to tumors of the adrenal gland and kidney.
Another food additive to look out for
is "MSG" which hides
behind dozens of names, such as natural flavoring, yeast extract, autolyzed
yeast extract, disodium guanylate, disodium inosinate, caseinate, textured
protein, hydrolyzed pea protein and many others. Currently, labeling standards
do not require MSG to be listed in the ingredient list of thousands of foods.
One
quote from Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food pretty much says it all:
One of the problems with the products of food science is that,
as Joan Gussow has pointed out, they lie to your body; their artificial colors
and flavors and synthetic sweeteners and novel fats confound the senses we rely
on to assess new foods and prepare our bodies to deal with them. Foods that lie
leave us with little choice but to eat by the number, consulting labels rather
than our senses.
Another
issue with artificial foods is that, just like other highly processed foods,
they’re relatively new and therefore we don’t know exactly how their
consumption affects the body long term. Remember
how margarine was touted as a healthy alternative to butter when
decades later we learned the dangers of hydrogenated oils?
There
have been recent studies on the effects of artificial dyes in our food
especially for kids. Think about how your kids react not only when they
have had the dreaded SUGAR but when that sugar is tied to artificial
colourings! Usually this combination makes kids crazy, causes melt downs
and the like! Not fun!!
This
mini-challenge reminds me that I’ve been wanting to share the difference
between “natural” and “organic” food products. Packaging and labels can be very
confusing these days! When a product says it is “natural” it just means that
the ingredients come from something naturally created like a plant or an
animal. If a product weren’t “natural” it could contain artificial
ingredients like Red Dye #40 that’s chemically created or “invented” by food
scientists in a lab somewhere. Sound appetizing?
“Organic”
food is a whole different story and refers to products that have not been
treated with synthetic fertilizers or chemical pesticides, which is a good
thing.
For
the record, whether you are buying food that is “all natural” or “organic” it
does not mean those products are whole grain, low in sodium, or lacking
loads of sweeteners like sugar. To put things in
perspective, high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is actually a “natural”
ingredient since it is made from corn. But that doesn't mean it's an ingredient
I'm ok with if I come across it on the back of a package! However if
given the choice I would much rather consume HFCS over an artificially created
sweetener like Splenda. With that being said, natural products are a far better
choice than artificial ones although we would by no means automatically deem
them as being “real food.”
So I'm
sure this is all a bit confusing but the beauty of all this is that with the
Facebook group we can all talk about what we come across and I can help clean
things up for you. Packaging can be SO tricky!!! But I am hoping
this Challenge won’t be too difficult because I'm not asking you to go full
force with “real food,” but instead to just avoid the items that are basically
fake. And hopefully this experience will be eye opening for you as far as how
many products contain these fake, artificial additives.
Even most cough syrups, children’s Tylenol products, and throat
lozenges contain artificial ingredients! So be on the lookout next week and
avoid all additives that were “invented” within the last century and instead
stick to those trustworthy ingredients that our ancestors have survived on for
thousands of years! Remember Great Grandma? If she would recognize
it than it's ok!
INGREDIENT
|
WHY IT'S USED
|
WHY IT'S BAD
|
Artificial Colors |
|
|
Artificial Flavorings |
|
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Artificial
Sweeteners
(Acesulfame-K, As-partame, Equal®, NutraSweet®, Sac-charin, Sweet’n Low®, Sucralose, Splenda® & Sorbitol)
|
|
|
Benzoate
Preservatives
(BHT, BHA, TBHQ)
|
|
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