Food Additives: Do We Eat A Lot of Them?
A food additive is a product that is added to a food in order to preserve or improve its features and properties. Almost all processed foods contain food additives and our diet is largely made up of those foods.
Many additives will not harm your health. What is more, they sometimes are absolutely essential to preserve the freshness of the product. However, food additives are often useless and many are harmful and, too often, they are both useless and harmful at the same time. Don’t forget that certain additives, such as saccharin, were seen as harmless when they were introduced, but are banned today!
It is safe to say that the less our foods contain additives, the more they are suited for our system. Ideally, look for foods that contain as little as possible, since many additives are suspicious.
Some Examples of Acceptable Food Additives:
Pectin, rennet, papain, lecithin, food yeast, beeswax, carotene, caramel, magnesium vegetable stearate, chlorophyll, agar and cellulose.
Some Examples of Food Additives to Avoid:
Polysorbate 80 sulphides, propan, nitric acid, dichloromethane, nitrates (meats), nitrities (meat), talc, calcium proprionate, BHT and BHA, white sugar, artificial colours phosphoric acid, sodium proprionate, sodium glutamate or monosodium glutamate.
How Do We Find Our Way Around?
First, it is important to realize that there is no miracle solution. This is what you have to do: take the time to read the labels, to get information and to select only the products that respond to your quality criteria, which means products that contain no harmful food additives, that have retained their nutritious values and their wholesomeness.
