Food Democracy

Coca-Cola is phasing out the use of the controversial additive sodium benzoate in Diet Coke because of consumer demand for more natural products. The company said it began removing the preservative (E211) from production lines in January, and so it should be out of circulation by the end of the year. However, the additive removal is only currently planned for products sold in Britain. The Coca-Cola Company could not confirm if any other countries would follow suit.

A spokesperson also said that there are no current plans to remove sodium benzoate from any other of its brands, such as Fanta, Sprite, Oasis and regular Coca-Cola.

“The product is very important technically, especially in fruit-based drinks,” said a spokesperson. “We are currently able to remove it from Diet Coke and we will look at removing it from products where technically possible.”

Sodium benzoate is used as a preservative in soft drinks, jams, fruit juices, pickles, shrimp, pharmaceuticals (especially cough syrups), and soy sauces. It primarily prevents them from going moldy. Recent studies have highlighted health concerns from its use.

However, Coca-Cola insisted the move was not a result of the studies and its removal from Diet Coke is simply a response to consumer preferences for natural. Read the rest of this entry »

In 2007, an estimated 194 million Americans (2/3 of the total population) consumed products sweetened with sugar substitutes, according to the Calorie Control Council, an industry group. That’s 14 million more than in 2004. The council reports that the most popular are sugar-free or reduced-sugar beverages, ice cream and desserts, chewing gum and sugar substitutes spooned into coffee or tea.

Five artificial sweeteners – acesulfame K, aspartame, neotame, saccharin, sucralose – are approved for use in the U.S. All are chemically manufactured molecules – molecules that do not exist in nature.

More info at http://www.holisticmed.com/aspartame/

According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, over one million people are allergic to substances commonly added to beer, wine, and liquor. Because the law does not require that ingredients be printed on alcoholic-beverage labels, most consumers don’t know, for example, which wines contain such additives as sulfur dioxide and which liqueurs contain coffee whiteners.

So what exactly is in your beer?

Some typical beer additives:

Betaglucanase
Ammonia caramel
Rhoiso-alpha acids
Sulphur dioxide
Protease
Amyloglucosidase
Propylene glycol alginate
Silicone
Sodium benzoate

According to Felicity Lawrence, author of the book, Not On The Label, bread making changed in the Sixties when scientists discovered how to make a loaf quickly and bulk it up with water.

“Instead of allowing two to three days fermentation they found that air and water could be incorporated into dough if it was mixed at high speeds,” she says.

“Double the quantity of yeast was needed to make it rise, chemical oxidants were essential to get the gas in and hardened fat had to be added to provide structure. The process gave a much higher yield of bread from each sack of flour because the dough absorbed so much water.” The added fat, often in the form of unhealthy hydrogenated fat, helps today’s bread look firm and spongy. It is often included as a part of the ambiguous-sounding “flour treatment agent” usually found listed in the ingredients.

“One man’s food is another man’s poison” is a familiar and centuries old saying which simply states that different people can have very different reactions to exactly the same food. For example, few of us would think twice about munching on peanuts while cheering for our favorite baseball team, however, for individuals with a sensitivity or allergy to peanuts, a mere whiff of just the peanut powder could pose a life threatening situation. Fortunately, few of us will ever have to worry about such extreme reactions to foods, but it may come as a surprise that at least 30% of us will experience one or more episodes of some kind of food sensitivity during our lifetime. These may cause symptoms with varying degrees of physical discomfort which are often never related to food as their source.

Read the rest of the article at: World’s Healthiest Foods:Food Sensitivities

by Roman Bystrianyk/Health Sentinel

Autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), dyslexia, mental retardation, lowered IQ and other learning and behavior disorders are very common in today’s American children. The occurrence of these learning and developmental disabilities (LDDs) appears to be rising with between 5 to 15 percent of all children under the age of 18 in the United States affected. In general, these disabilities have significantly increased over the past 40 years and now affect more than 12 million children in the United States.

On February 20, 2008 The Collaborative on Health and the Environment’s Learning and Developmental Disabilities Initiative published a Scientific Consensus Statement on Environmental Agents Associated with Neurodevelopmental Disorder. This statement signed by more than 50 national and international health professionals and scientists summarizes the most recent science about environmental contaminants associated with learning and developmental disabilities. The report that was drafted by this prestigious group contains over 200 scientific references.

“We know enough now to move on with taking steps to protect our children. This document pulls that knowledge together to further this vital effort,” said reviewer Martha Herbert, PhD, MD, an assistant professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and a pediatric neurologist with subspecialty certification in neurodevelopmental disabilities at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

Exposure to a wide variety of chemicals is now an unavoidable fact of modern life. Approximately 3,000 chemicals are manufactured in amounts over 1,000,000 pounds each year. Read the rest of this entry »

Ingestion of processed free glutamic acid (MSG) is known to produce a variety of adverse reactions in some people. These reactions, although seemingly dissimilar, are no more diverse than reactions found as side effects of certain neurological drugs.

The most common symptoms of MSG sensitivity are headache, flushing, tingling, weakness, and stomachache. After eating meals prepared with MSG, people with MSG sensitivity may have a migraine, visual disturbance, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, weakness, tightness of the chest, difficulty breathing, skin rash, or sensitivity to light, noise, or smells. Read the rest of this entry »

Scientists from Purdue University now believe that a sweet taste followed by no calories may make the body crave extra food.

Their research, published in the journal Behavioral Neuroscience, found that saccharin-fed mice ate more calories, put on more fat, and gained more weight than their sugar-fed counterparts.

They did not make any attempt to cut back on their food later to regulate their weight.

The researchers wrote in the journal: “The data clearly indicate that consuming a food sweetened with no-calorie saccharin can lead to greater body-weight gain and adiposity than would consuming the same food sweetened with higher calorie sugar.

“One theory, they said, was that, in normal conditions, the arrival of a sweet taste in the mouth helped prime the metabolism for the arrival of a calorie-heavy, sweet meal into the digestive system. When the meal does not arrive, they said, the body may get confused and have more trouble regulating its appetite when other food is around. Read the rest of this entry »

-by Lauralee Berrill, New Zealand

Let me start by saying a chemical additive doesn’t necessarily ‘appear’ to be a problem immediately after ingestion. Quite often the effects are cumulative; a gradual build-up in the body produces roller-coaster days, some good, some bad. Some children are more sensitive to food chemicals and display immediate effects soon after ingestion of additives, colours in particular. In small amounts additives are not harmful. Effects are dose related and, tragically, dose for weight, children are consuming several times more additives than the acceptable daily intake (ADI).

Before we get into the details of the most common problem foods, it is necessary to understand the testing and approval process, with emphasis on those factors that may confer the level of risk of toxic additives in infants and young children’s diets. Read the rest of this entry »

-Kelly Scotti, HHC

Packaged and processed foods get many a family through the day. They’re convenient, portable, and they stay fresh for a long time (thanks to all those preservatives). Many kids can’t get enough of these foods; they’re almost addicted to them. The additives put into processed foods to make them look and taste better include unhealthy amounts of extra salt, fat, and sugar—and those are the ones you can pronounce. These additives, however, have a price that may include side effects, food allergies, increased waist lines, decreased absorption of minerals and vitamins, cancer and more. Today, when one in three American children are overweight or obese (and even more than one in three adults) and food allergies are rampant, we have no choice but to finally pay attention to what we are eating.

Below is a list of the 12 most pervasive and detrimental food additives/substances you can eat, in no particular order.

1. Artificial Sweeteners are a combination of chemicals that exist to make our foods sweeter without the calories of sugar. The funny thing is that our nation has been getting fatter since the widespread introduction of these sweeteners into the food supply. Why would that be? And what are the dangers of artificial sweeteners? Read the rest of this entry »