Food Additives
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved some 2,800 food additives. These include chemicals added to extend shelf life, enhance flavor and color, and stabilize, thicken, and emulsify our foods. Preservatives such as benzoates, sulfites, nitrates, and nitrites retard food spoilage by checking the growth of microbes—bacteria, yeasts, and molds and other fungi. Of these preservatives, benzoates are used most frequently.
Sulfites are found in beer, wine, and dried fruit. Both of these additives can cause allergic reactions in some people, so they should be avoided by allergy-prone individuals. Sodium nitrate and nitrite protect against bacterial growth and preserve food color. They are widely used today in curing meat and smoking fish.
Packaged meats containing sodium nitrite should be avoided because, in the stomach, nitrites combine with products of protein breakdown called amines to form carcinogens (cancer-causing agents) known as nitrosamines. Nitrogen from chemical fertilizers is a documented source of nitrates. Seepage into underground aquifers can contaminate drinking water sup-plies. Vegetables, too, can absorb nitrogen compounds from fertil-izers, and these are passed on to humans when we eat the plants. Bacteria in the stomach then convert the nitrogen compounds to deadly nitrites. When nitrites enter the bloodstream, they react with hemoglobin to form methemoglobin. The resulting disease, methemoglobinemia, causes the victim to turn blue from lack of oxygen. Suffocation and death may result.
Benjamin Feingold, M.D., found that a large percentage of hyperactive children are unusually sensitive to preservatives and to artificial colors and flavors. He found a link between food additives and learning and behavioral disorders. Today, hyperactivity is better known as attention deficit disorder (ADD). ADD affects a number of adults, as well as children, and is commonly treated with counseling, behavior modification techniques, and drugs.
Since drugs destroy nutrients, thereby deepening deficiency, they can aggravate the problem by increasing sensitivity to adverse effects of food additives. In truth, many of these additives are dispensable. Artificial col-ors, for example, do not provide any benefit, but are used only to make food look attractive. Dietary restriction of food additives is certainly a safer and, most likely, a more effective approach, as demonstrated by the success of the Feingold diet. Choose whole foods whenever possible to avoid preservatives and other food additives.
