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Tag: chemicals

06.14.2012

chemicals in our food

Image from The Daily Green

For an informational discussion of a chemicals in our food visit this article by Nathan Myhrvold at Saveur magazine:

We were often asked “Why are you putting so many chemicals into your food?” Often the questioner, in the next breath, said something like, “I prefer simple foods, like pasta, bread, cheese, and wine.”

We can’t help but chuckle at comments like these. Are there chemicals in our food? Yes, and elements, too! All food is made of chemicals—but of course that’s not the intent of the question. These people are really asking us why some of our recipes call for refined or unfamiliar chemicals.

As I like to remind people, everything is chemical! Check the link for more. And for a list of the most common “chemical” ingredients click here.

 

03.20.2012

people really don’t understand that everything is chemical

The New York Times ran an article about the dangers of chemicals in household items – specifically children’s exposure to these items. Here’s the first few paragraphs. Be prepared to be alarmed!

LAURA MacCLEERY was four months pregnant when she parked herself on the couch and started an inventory of the chemicals in her Alexandria, Va., town house. First, Ms. MacCleery, 40, a lawyer and women’s health advocate, collected 70 products in a pile: things like makeup, shampoo, detergents and sink cleaners. Then she typed the names of the cosmetics into an online database called Skin Deep, created by the Environmental Working Group (ewg.org/skindeep), a research and advocacy organization.

The results were not comforting. Ms. MacCleery’s $25 lipsticks contained a dizzying brew of chemicals, including ethylhexyl methoxycinnamate, a possible endocrine disruptor. “When I bought them, I thought I was doing something special for myself,” she said. “But then it turned out I was probably eating petrochemicals.” The lipsticks went into the trash bag.

For some products, the site listed dozens of exotic chemicals and compounds. There were estrogenic hormones and neurotoxins and bioaccumulators. For other items, there was almost no information at all. What effects could these substances have on her baby? Ms. MacCleery didn’t know and didn’t intend to find out.

By the time the inventory was over, “I threw out, I would say, all but three or four of the items,” she said. “Everything was toxic. Everything.”

Every so often an article about the dangers of chemicals in this or that pop up. They are mostly alarmist pieces with little merit. Everything around us is chemical, and the vast majority of the chemicals we are exposed to on a daily basis are harmless. The things she is freaking out about in cosmetics are present in high enough concentrations to be of any major concern. Josh Bloom has a nice rebuttal you can read. His last line sums it up quite nicely:

Your kids are going to spend a lifetime being exposed to chemicals: auto exhaust, smoke, soot, chlorine, soap, perfume. They will be fine. Just calm down. The groups with a vested interest in keeping you afraid are not a credible source of information.

Well said.

03.16.2012

science or bullshit?

Today’s science or bullshit is brought to you by food republic in a post titled “6 Scary Things Hiding in Your Food”.  Excerpt:

These days it’s hard for even die-hard foodies to know what they’re eating or drinking. That’s because food has changed from something that didn’t need a modifier – if it walked, swam, flew or grew out of the ground, it was food – to something that stopped off at Mr. Burns’ nuclear plant on the way to your plate.

Let’s call it “foodiness.” Like Stephen Colbert’s truthiness, which wasn’t about truth, we’re not consuming food as much as we’re consuming an edible manufactured doppelganger designed to look and taste like food, but isn’t actually food: like veggie puffs with no vegetables; fruit bars with no fruit; like gold fish crackers with no goldfish.

First up on the list of six is TBHQ.

1. TBHQ, a.k.a Butane

Turns out Butane isn’t just for lighters anymore – it’s also an artificial anti-oxidant that they put it in chicken nuggets to keep them “fresh” tasting.

TBHQ is NOT butane. TBHQ has the chemical formula C10H14O2 & is a tan or brown powder at room temperature. Butane has the formula C4H10  and is a colorless odorless gas. Take a look at the structures of the molecules and see that there is absolutely no similarity.

BUTANE! oh my!

TBHQ and butane are not the same.

And for the record TBHQ is safe and approved by the FDA as a preservative and food additive when its less than 0.02% of the oil or fat content in foods. Next up on the list is estrogen.

2. Estrogen:

Regular milk is full of hormones used by the milk industry to keep the cows knocked up and lactating all year round. Sound gross? It is. So when you drink regular milk you take a shot of hormones with it. And all you wanted was a bowl of cereal.

Found in: All non-organic dairy.

Fair enough. Estrogen is a hormone and cows are pumped full of hormones so they keep lactating year round. But there isn’t really much difference in the amount of estrogen in regular milk when compared to the estrogen levels in organic dairy. And in milk from any animal there are going to multiple hormones, its unfair to single out estrogen, when their are plenty others, even though none have been scientifically linked to poor health outcomes. Hormone free milk doesn’t exist.

And theres more:

4. Propylene glycol, a.k.a antifreeze:

Uhmm, she has the wrong glycol here. Propylene glycol is in fact quite harmless. It is sometimes used as a nontoxic antifreeze. It is metabolized in humans into compounds that are normally found in digestive pathways. Serious toxicity isn’t observed in humans unless you ingest a whole hell of a lot in a very short time.  Long term exposure to the amounts usually found in food is also not thought you cause any deleterious health effects.  She is thinking of ethylene glycol which is much more toxic and used as antifreeze. When ethylene glycol is metabolized the end result is oxalic acid, which is toxic and effects the central nervous system, the heart and the kidneys. Needless to say you should never ingest ethylene glycol. If you see it listed in the ingredients of anything you eat, put it back on the shelf or throw it away.

So you heard it here folks. This is definitely bullshit and not science. Here’s some links if you want to read more.

References:

TBHQ is safe for food use. [US Law]

Hormones in Milk [PubMed]

Propylene glycol toxicity [US EPA, PDF]

 

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