consume
enough acrylamide in their food for it to be harmful, and whether the
substance–which causes cancer in laboratory animals at high
doses–is similarly hazardous to people, they said. But Terry C.
Troxell of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition
said yesterday, at a two-day advisory committee meeting on acrylamide, that the agency agreed with the WHO’s conclusion that the
discovery of acrylamide in many foods is a major concern and needs
to be aggressively researched.…
Troxell and other speakers stressed that ... its presence must be treated seriously. 8
ADDITIVES (COMMON) Unlike acrylamide, which was not deliberately–or in most cases even knowingly–introduced in foods, there is a long list of chemicals in what we eat which have been put there on purpose. Most of these additives, though not all, are there legally. That is, the manufacturers who put them there are not breaking any laws when they do so. These compounds include antioxidants intended to prevent food from going rancid, chelating agents put in to prevent discoloration, emulsifiers to keep water and oils mixed together, thickening agents, and flavor enhancers. There are hundreds of them, far too numerous to mention here, and as food manufacturers continue to experiment with new processes, more are being added every year.
In the U.S., the federal Food and Drug Administration is charged with regulating additives and assuring they are not dangerous. The laws and regulations the FDA goes by, however, are full of loopholes, as are the testing processes supposed to assess safety. For example, any additives that were considered safe by the FDA or USDA before the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938 was amended in 1958 are exempt from regulation.
That is, if scientists working with the facts and testing processes available in 1938—three years before Japan bombed Pearl Harbor—thought a substance safe, then it is deemed safe for all time, regardless of what present-day research may have to say about it. Among these exempt-from-examination items are sodium nitrite (see below) and potassium nitrite, which are used to preserve cold-cuts and lunch meats.
At its “Chemical Cuisine” website (www.cspinet.org/reports/chemcuisine.htm), the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has posted a list of 73 common additives, rating them according to safety and describing their possible side effects. Anyone interested in the safety of the food they eat can download the list, print it out, and take it with them to the supermarket. You may have to squint a bit to read the fine print on some processed food labels, and not all labels on the shelf provide a comprehensive list of ingredients, but at least you can look up what is there and compare it with the CSPI’s rankings.
For example, under sodium nitrite, sodium nitrate, you’ll find this entry:
Meat processors love sodium nitrite because it stabilizes the red color in cured meat (without nitrite, hot dogs and bacon would look gray) and gives a characteristic flavor. Sodium nitrate is used in dry cured meat, because it slowly breaks down into nitrite. Adding nitrite to food can lead to the formation of small amounts of potent cancer-causing chemicals (nitrosamines), particularly in fried bacon.
Several studies have linked consumption of cured meat and nitrite by children, pregnant women, and adults with various types of cancer. Although those studies have not yet proven that eating nitrite in bacon, sausage, and ham causes cancer in humans, pregnant women would be prudent to avoid those products.
The meat industry justifies its use of nitrite and nitrate by claiming that it prevents the growth of bacteria that cause botulism poisoning. That’s true, but freezing and refrigeration could also do that, and the USDA has developed a safe method of using lactic-acid- producing bacteria.” 9
The CSPI website also has pretty harsh words for most artificial food colorings and artificial flavorings, as well as for the sugar substitute aspartame, the flour “improver” potassium bromate, and various sulfites.
Among the various food colorings that have made it into the news media in recent years are Tartrazine (E102), Sunset Yellow (E110), and Ponceau 4R (E124), dyes used to impart the typically orange-red hue to Indian dishes such as chicken tikka masala, served in Indian tandoori restaurants around the world. The three coloring agents, if taken over extended periods, are believed to be linked to hyperactivity in children, as well as to a list of other serious ailments, including asthma and cancer. As the British newspaper The Guardian noted:
Random tests ordered by Trading Standards officers in Surrey suggest 57 percent of Indian restaurants in the county use “illegal and potentially dangerous” levels of dyes to give the sauce its distinctive orange-red hue.…
Out of 102 curry houses sampled, only 44 were using the colorings within legal limits. 10
ANTIBIOTICS Most of us think of antibiotics—biochemical substances produced by benign microorganisms that can inhibit or destroy harmful bacteria— as one of our best defenses against disease. After Alexander Fleming first isolated penicillin (produced by the mold penicillium) in 1928, and other scientists developed it for use as an antibacterial agent in 1941, the very word antibiotic became almost synonymous with “life saver.”
Not anymore. Thanks in large part to the modern, corporate food industry, antibiotics are now on the list of dangers to human health. How this happened makes a kind of modern morality tale.
As most of us learned in high school biology class, bacteria are very small, incredibly numerous, and reproduce at a rate that makes rabbits look like they’re practicing celibacy. In 24 hours, the offspring of a single Escherichia coli bacterium could outnumber the entire human population of the earth—and a certain number of that population of bugs will mutate.
All living things can mutate—experience a change in the character of one of their genes, or a change in the sequence of base pairs in a DNA molecule, which can then be passed on to their descendants. In large animals, like humans, mutations aren’t all that frequent, but in a population of millions upon millions of bacteria, reproducing at whirlwind speed, there’s “a whole lotta mutate’n goin’ on,” and each mutation can be passed on to millions of individuals within hours.
Antibiotics work by attacking bacteria in a variety of ways, such as breaking down cell walls or interfering with some vital step in the bacteria’s metabolism. However, when an antibiotic attacks a bacterial colony, it doesn’t always wipe that colony out. Some bacteria survive, either because they already had a genetic trait that blocked the antibiotic (called intrinsic resistance), or because they developed one while under attack (acquired resistance). These resistant bacteria can then go on reproducing, creating a resistant population. In general, the weaker the antibiotic attack, the more bacterial survivors there are—and the bigger the new, resistant population.
The best way to deliberately create a large, resistant population of harmful bacteria—if we are crazy enough to want to do this–would be to make many, many weak attacks on that species of bacteria with low doses of antibiotics. After each attack, there would be a fair portion of resistant survivors, and if the attacks are widespread enough, resistant bugs will soon be popping up everywhere.
This is exactly what our food production system is doing.
When a cow, pig or chicken “catches cold,” that is, develops a mild bacterial infection, its milk or meat production goes slightly
