Most people are familiar with the basics of good nutrition but many aren’t aware of the thousands of food additives found in popular foods which if consumed in excess could create health risks. MSN Health has put together a list of 10 additives you should try to avoid. Let’s be clear, we don’t expect you to avoid all of these additives altogether, although, it certainly is possible. The key is being aware of them so you can effectively limit their intake. The list of additives, inside…
10. Sodium Nitrate, Sodium Nitrite
Found in: bacon, ham, hot dogs, luncheon meats, smoked fish, and corned beef.
Used to stabilize food color and add flavor. When grilled it transforms into a reactive compound that has been linked to cancer.
9. BHA and BHT
Found in: many foods such as cereals, chewing gum, potato chips, and vegetable oils.
It prevents fats and oils from going rancid. For some people it can increase their cancer risk.
8. Propyl Gallate
Found in: meat products, chicken soup base, and chewing gum.
Also prevents fats and oils from spoiling. While not proven to cause cancer in humans, it is linked to cancer in animals.
7. Monosodium Glutamate
Found in: soups, salad dressings, chips, frozen entrees, and restaurant food. The infamous MSG, associated with Asian food can cause headaches and nausea for some people. Try using a moderate amount of salt as a healthier alternative.
6. Trans Fats
Found in: numerous foods, fast food.
Too much trans fat has been proven to cause heart disease and other serious health conditions. Experts recommend consuming no more than 2 grams per day.
5. Aspartame
Found in: low-calorie desserts, gelatins, drink mixes, and soft drinks.
Studies have shown that lifelong consumption may increase risk of cancer or other neurological problems.
4. Acesulfame-K
Found in: baked goods, chewing gum, and gelatin desserts.
Not proven to be unhealthy, but studies on this additive have been scant. If that concerns you, then you may want to avoid this sweetener.
3. Food Colorings: Blue 1, 2; Red 3; Green 3; Yellow 6
Found in: products too numerous to mention.
These colorings have been linked to cancer in animals, while Yellow 6 has been linked to bladder cancer in humans.
2. Olestra
Found in: reduced fat snack chips.
Olestra blocks fat absorption but blocks vitamin absorption as well. It can also cause severe diarrhea, cramps and gas.
1. Potassium Bromate
Found in: white flour, breads, and rolls.
Most bromate breaks down into a harmless form, however, small amounts can create a risk for people. California requires a cancer warning on products with this ingredient.
12 Food Additives to Avoid [MSN Health]
(Photo: ableman)
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@johnva: I think why HFCS is much worse is that the body processes it differently than sugar. Our sating mechanism isn’t tripped by HFCS, so much more is tolerable than the case with sugar. Combined with the fact that it’s far too cheap (because of agri-business corporate welfare), there’s far too much of it dumped in everything. A double-whammy.
@battra92: You lost me.
@TheFlamingoKing: Aspartame is safe for those who use it? Sure, depending on what you consider “safe.” It might not be quite so safe for other people, as my nurse sister-in-law and her co-workers discovered back in the early 90s.
She and the rest of the nurses on her floor were having a personnel problem. The error rate on charts (and God alone knows what else) became a huge problem, and management tried all sorts of ways to try to find out what was happening. They had meetings, fired people, gave extra training, and even shadowed the nurses, and nothing helped. Then one of the head nurses happened to read something about aspartame and short-term memory loss, and put a stop to the constant (several cans a day per nurse) drinking of diet soda on the floor. Within a few weeks, the error rate returned to normal.
@DeepFriar: That stuff isn’t really “food”. It’s in things you eat, but if you aren’t eating processed foods, you don’t really have to worry about eating these items.
I don’t typically shop at expensive organic grocery stores (I love visiting Whole Foods, but I just can’t afford it except for the occasional treat) and it’s pretty easy for me to avoid all of the ingredients on this list plus HFCS (MSG excluded, it doesn’t affect me). The key, as several of you have noted, is to avoid processed foods (which you should be doing anyways) and to eat fresh vegetables, fruit and (this is important) whole wheat instead of white bread (which typically has Potassium Bromate and HFCS in it). My weekly grocery trips are to an Asian grocery and Kroger’s, so it’s not exactly a Herculean feet to avoid all the chemical crap agribusiness tries to make us eat.
People who think that Whole Foods gives a rat’s about their health or the environment should visit some of the farms they buy from. Then they should visit smaller local markets that sell the exact same products from the exact same places for pennies on the dollar. The only problem with this approach is that you have to look at brown people who don’t own quite as many strollers as you do.
With the soon to be installed Obama administration showing that it is not in the pockets of big corporations, it’s time for a start-up soda company (perhaps as a sideline of an independent Microbrewer) to start selling soda sweetened with stevia. Stevia is used many countries as an alternative to artificial sweeteners since it is 200 times sweeter than sugar, but is a 100% natural plant extract and has been on the FDA’s GRAS list for over 80 years.
Unfortunately, the FDA at the request of NutraSweet banned the marketing of stevia as a sweetener as they rightfully concerned that a sweetener that can easily be grown by farmers and that can’t be patented would hurt their bottom line.
You can get stevia (TJ’s carries it), but it is sold as an ‘herbal supplement.’ The only widely available beverages with it are Celestial Seasonings teas, but they don’t come bottled like say Snapple or Arizona teas do.
/jumps on the cancer train
All aboard for fear-mongering ville!
Yes, these things might not be super good for you, but FFS, they say everything is going to give you cancer eventually. I guess I better not eat, use my cellohone, and lock myself in my bedroom under the sheets for the rest of my life…but I am sure by then someone will find out that cotton will give you cancer as well.
@khiltd: Woah, way to make a sweeping generalization, there.
MSG is bad for you because it means more sodium in your diet. Otherwise, it’s just something that can bind to your umami taste receptors.
HFCS isn’t bad because it’s a harmful additive. It’s bad because food manufacturers use it to bulk up product. Technically, it’s no worse than honey (all though, I’d take honey over HFCS any day). But when you’re consuming 30 grams of it in a bottle of Pepsi, that’s when it becomes “unhealthy.”
Sodium benzoate doesn’t break down into benzene, unless it’s combined with ascorbic acid (vitamin C). Typically, it dissociates into sodium and benzoate ions. It’s a salt of an organic acid, like potassium sorbate. Plants use these organic acids to prevent bacterial and fungal growth on their seeds/fruits. They make great preservatives because they screw up the metabolism of microbes. In yeast studies they can lead to damage of the mitochrondia, which found a yeast can lead to death. On a small scale, they don’t do much to humans; maybe kill off a few cells in our stomach or intestines. However, when people consume higher doses of these organic acids, they have the potential to do widespread cellular damage. This can mean tissue damage or tumor formation.
What’s a higher dose? They don’t know. But, look at the label for every liquid/wet product in your kitchen. You’d be surprised how much of this stuff you consume every day.
The Brits are scared.
[www.beveragedaily.com]
[www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov]
@COELACANTH: Wait…you have to be an EXPERT to grow food?
My parents were apparently pretty damn smart then, always growing food in the backyard.
Contrary to popular belief, plants are pretty easy to grow, plant them, water them…ta da!
@BlackFlag55: a gentleman’s ranch?! Really?! Tell me more…seriously.
@TheFlamingoKing:
Aspartame is not found in European products. So are the many additives that we have here in US. FDA are a bunch of money grabbing morons who should disappear. They take bribes and as long as something can pass with a low death toll they will approve. Take a look at dogs, and cats for example. Why do they get similar forms of cancer as we humans get. It must be those additives. When I was in Ukraine that’s where I was born I had a dog and my dog ate anything we ate. Fruits, potatoes, meats, vegetables, and he loved chocolate. My dog was never obese, very healthy and died of old age at 21. Over here, there are so many additives even in the dog food that of course they too will get cancer.
@Dobernala:
Good advice.
@veronykah: “a gentleman’s ranch?! Really?! Tell me more…seriously.”
where he grows his own “beeves” !!! I want to know more too.
I have some bad news: everything causes cancer.
“what doesn’t cause cancer?
Chemotherapy?”
Yeah, it can cause bone cancers or leukemias.
@Trai_Dep: do you have any scientific evidence for this nonsense?
I just wanted to say THANK YOU for not including the alternative-lifestyle boogyman of the year, high fructose corn syrup.
Dobernala: Don’t be so sure.
mikelotus: No, he doesn’t. Fructose and glucose are processed differently in the body, but given that there’s only a 5% difference in the fructose levels in regular corn syrup and “high” fructose corn syrup, that can’t be the issue. I think the hype is somehow related to the whole corn-ethanol subsidy nonsense.
@DeepFriar: You can laugh all you want. But the fact is, Medical costs are BANKRUPTING America. Worse than war, even! The expected health care costs for the baby boomers is $50 TRILLION. General Motors spends more on Health Care than on STEEL. Ballooning health insurance costs are a major contributing factor to outsourcing overseas – businesses just can’t afford health insurance for employees even if they want to. America spends ONE OUT OF EVERY FIVE DOLLARS OF ***GDP*** ON HEALTH CARE!!!
And, what do we get for this? Are we healthy? Do most Americans have high energy levels and mental alertness?
Look around you. Go into a Wal-Mart in middle America, see everyone’s carts full of pringles and coca-cola. For all their expensive medical care and prescription drugs, do you see a robust, healthy group of people? I’ve been to a lot of Wal-Marts in a lot of out of the way places, and what I saw scared me.
Younger and younger people are suffering from diabetes, weird cancers, obesity. It’s a national tragedy, a national scandal.
The American Diet, hell, the western diet, is fundamentally broken-along with it’s blood cousin, the medical system. Don’t fear anything – just don’t eat any food that is made in a factory.
I’ve been living in South Korea for awhile..when you go hiking, everybody on the trail is 50, 60, 70, 80 years old. The generation raised on traditional food – before westernization. You see little old ladies hiking rigorous 15 miles hikes. You see very few young people. All the young people are sitting around, eating potato chips, eating candy bars, playing computer games, with a very high obesity rate. It makes me cry.
@COELACANTH:
This professor might have not been looking back far enough. If you look at the nutrition of, say, Boston in 1870, yes, it was certainly atrocious.
A highly recommended book is “Nutrition an dPhysical Degeneration”, by Weston Price, written in the 1920s. From Amazon:
For nearly 10 years, Weston Price and his wife traveled around the world in search of the secret to health. Instead of looking at people afflicted with disease symptoms, this highly-respected dentist and dental researcher chose to focus on healthy individuals, and challenged himself to understand how they achieved such amazing health. Dr. Price traveled to hundreds of cities in a total of 14 different countries in his search to find healthy people. He investigated some of the most remote areas in the world. He observed perfect dental arches, minimal tooth decay, high immunity to tuberculosis and overall excellent health in those groups of people who ate their indigenous foods. He found when these people were introduced to modernized foods, such as white flour, white sugar, refined vegetable oils and canned goods, signs of degeneration quickly became quite evident. Dental caries, deformed jaw structures, crooked teeth, arthritis and a low immunity to tuberculosis became rampant amongst them. Dr. Price documented this ancestral wisdom including hundreds of photos in his book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration.
It’s worth the read.
From wikipedia:
A 2007 study, published in Annals of Oncology of the European Society for Medical Oncology, reviewed Italian studies of instances of cancer from 1991 and 2004 and concluded a “lack of association between saccharin, aspartame and other sweeteners and the risk of several common neoplasms”.
There’s not really any solid evidence for all of those things. It’s misleading to say they are “linked with cancer” or anything like that. Considering the vast amount of factors associated with cancer, these additives are completely insignificant. You might as well avoid sunlight while you are at it (skin cancer)
This article really really bothers me. I just sent a nasty e-mail to the author. It’s really just health nut propaganda. I honestly wonder what the authors agenda is.
Well, you know… oxygen is the #1 cause of free radicals. Please stop breathing!
@Truvill: @Truvill: @Truvill:
I bake my own bread. Its way cheaper and honestly only takes 20 minutes of real work to make 2 loaves – the rest is waiting. I do it after dinner once the kids are in bed.
My parents used to own a chinese carry out several years ago (we had it for 20 years) and let me say that MSG was our bread and butter, that ish is tasty!!!
Some people are actually allergic and we had no problems taking it out (the wok was washed between every order). However one time we were super busy, telling people an hour wait (which is rare for chinese carry out) and we had a load of people in the waiting room. One woman comes in and orders and says “No MSG”…no problem. Then one woman who had been waiting for her food comes up to me and says “yeah I don’t want and M-G-S either”…friggin’ MGS…b!tch didn’t even know what it was and didn’t want it…moron.
Acesulfame-K: “Not proven to be unhealthy, but studies on this additive have been scant.” Really? Broccoli hasn’t been proven to be unhealthy either, but I bet no one has done any studies to prove it is bad for me. Maybe I should avoid that, too. Ugh
Aspartame is an ingredient in foods that is broken down by the body to amino acids aspartic acid and phenylalanine. These amino acids are found in many other foods like meats, milk, fuits and vegetables. These amino acids are digested the same way in the body whether they come from aspartame or common foods. Aspartame’s safety has been well documented in over 200 studies which have been reviewed and confirmed by regulatory agencies in more than 100 countries. It is unfortunate that urban myths about aspartame and its safety continue to be repeated which continues to confuse the public. I am a member of the American Dietetic Association which supports the safety of aspartame as does the American Medical Association and the American Diabetes Association.
With some exceptions where even casual consumption can cause issues in some people; e.g., Olestra, MSG, maybe Trans Fats, Aspartame for phenylketonurics; when something says “may cause cancer”, my B.S. alarm goes off.
I still remember the whole Alar scare back in the day. The panic was so widespread and so pervasive that schools were taking apples off menus, treating them like nuclear waste or (like nowadays) peanuts. Even famous toxicologist Meryl Streep (yes, THAT Meryl Streep) testified before Congress about the horrible dangers of Alar.
But then the rest of the story came out. One would have to eat bushels of apples every day for months or years — or drink gallons of apple juice a day for months or years — to consume enough Alar to have an effect.
When something says “may cause cancer”, what they mean is they pumped enough of this stuff into rats and mice until it became toxic. Of course, when you ramp up the cancer-causing dosage from mouse-sized to human-sized, it turns out to be an obscenely huge amount that nobody could consume in that amount of time.
When somebody says that something is dangerous or cancerous, the first question we need to ask is how much does one have to consume for it to be toxic? After all, even pure clean distilled water is toxic in sufficient amounts.
@lkatic: The ADA and the AMA have failed to take into account the dangerous chemicals that form when aspartame is heated in the presence of the other ingredients in diet sodas. The heat necessary to make this reaction come about is no more than pallets of cans and bottles undergo when they sit in an un-airconditioned warehouse dock or in the back of a non-cooled delivery truck.
Sellout.
@CyGuy: There already is a stevia-sweetened soda called Zevia. It’s not widely available though.
[www.zevia.com]
@speedwell: I think aspartame can be bad for you, when you are drinking it in high concentrations. But I have been drinking a can or bottle, occasionally more, every day for months and so far have had no short term memory loss. I also am not going blind, or getting MS symptoms, or cancer, or anything else bad that people blame on aspartame.
I think the problem is that the chemicals formed when aspartame breaks down can build up and cause problems. Which is why the FDA has a maximum recommended daily limit.
Just like real soda, drinking 6 cans a day can’t be healthy.