Food Additives Can Be Dangerous

Dr Richard Ronk, US Food & Drug Administrator, estimates that overall the number of chemicals used in food processing reaches 11,000 – 12,000.

The uncertain safety of food additives falls into three categories. The first concerns whether a chemical poisons you immediately. The second concerns slow poisoning on chronic exposure and the third concerns whether the substance causes cancer (carcinogenesis) 20 -30 years later.

Most food additives have been tested for category one safety only. The reason is that it is very expensive to test food additives up to a category three level.

The Canadian tests which led to the banning of saccharin (a sugar substitute), for example, required the time of several senior scientists over a four-year period and cost a million dollars.

Government laboratories, including the Food & Drug Administration, just don’t have the resources to test every chemical and industry, understandably, has shown a reluctance to invest in such tests. Why should they undertake tests on a similar and useful (to them) additive which might result in it being banned?

Many food additives can interact with the known vitamins of foods. Sulfite, a common additive in many foods (like in soft drinks, wines, vinegar, dried fruit, etc.), destroys thiamin and folic acid. Sodium carbonate or lime, another additive, also destroys thiamin while causing severe loss of several amino acids.

And, do you that iron added to fortify many processed foods, causes destruction of vitamin C (ascorbic acid) and vitamin E (tocopherol)?

TIDBITS. Keep Cool and Live Longer! You’ll live 500 years, says scientists, if body temperature were just 8 degrees cooler.

That’s how much of an extent heat can affect a life span! So writes Otto Wolfgang in Strength & Health Magazine, a Bob Hoffman publication.

Your heart, for example, works harder at a given task during summer than in the cold months – 10 times as hard in 90 degrees as in 70. Doctors call it increase “cardiac output.”

Tests also show that the older a person gets, the harder it becomes for him to withstand heat.