Category Archives: Food

Controversial Additives in Organic Food

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Additives in food have been around for thousands of years. The most widely used food additives in North America include sugar, salt and corn syrup. In total, nearly 3000 substances are used as food additives. Another 12,000 find their way into our food supply indirectly, including pesticides!

Many dairy products contain Carageenan. This food additive is now linked to colon cancer.

Many dairy products contain Carageenan. This food additive is now linked to colon cancer.

With thousands of additives, how do we know which ones are safe? Most of us don’t have hours on end to read all the labels on food products in the grocery store. All products surely contain some form of food additive…even food products known to be “organic”. After all, the organic food industry makes 30-billion-a-year, so tweaking the standards and rules is only fair game for most of the big players.

Recently, one of the largest Organic and Standards Programs in the United States was questioned.[i] As their board started to include more of corporate America’s fortune 500 companies, the ingredients that were becoming acceptable on the list of “certified organic” products became questionable.

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Chemical In Canned Food Lining Linked to Obesity

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The last time you bought a can of organic tomatoes you probably were more focused on the “organic” ingredients, not the packaging itself. Yes, buying organic can help balance one’s modern regime of highly processed food, but have you ever thought about the chemicals present in the PACKAGING of the food you buy?

Unfortunately, in a lot of canned foods, a chemical called “Bisphenol A” is still being used as a preservative within the lining. This chemical has been in the spotlight a lot over the past few years for its use in plastic water-bottles, however it is also used in the manufacturing of polycarbonate plastics, adhesives, and the lining of food containers.

New cutting-edge research is suggesting Bisphenol-A can actually attribute to adverse effects on long term human health (even your unborn fetus) in terms of exacerbating the development of OBESITY. It was first discovered accidentally by researchers who fed mice small amounts of these chemicals causing them to get fat. The phenomenon is so striking that the scientific community is assigning these chemicals a class of their own – OBESOGENS.

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Dish Soap Contains Triclosan

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When you buy dish soap, you probably think that you are saving all those sea creatures, birds and animals affected by oil spills. After all, one dollar of every bottle bought goes directly to saving wildlife (as seen in the advertisement below).

This advertising campaign made Dawn a BILLION DOLLARS in revenue last year!!

What companies don’t tell you is that most dish soap contains a chemical ingredient called “triclosan” that is actually recognized by Envirionment Canada as toxic to animals. Specifically, they wrote that trichlosan has “a high inherent toxicity to a variety of aquatic organisms, such as algae, macrophytes, invertebrates, amphibians and fish.”

So what is Triclosan? “Triclosan (5-chloro-2-(2,4-dichlorophenoxy)phenol) is used as a material preservative and as an antimicrobial ingredient in a variety of consumer products to stop the growth of bacteria, fungi and mildew and to deodorize.” – Environment Canada.


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Green Washing On The Rise

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The results of a recent study conducted by TerraChoice, a sustainability and marketing consulting company, show a 73% increase in green products when compared to 2009. However, the problem we are still facing is “green washing”. Green washing is defined as the act of misleading consumers about the environmental practices a company or the environmental benefits of a product or service.

TerraChoice surveyed 5296 products in the U.S. and Canada which make environmental claims. They visited 19 retail stores in Canada and 15 in the United States total and found that ~4.5% of all products were “sin-free” of green-washing. This means that 95.5 % of consumer products which claim to be green are still guilty of at least one of the sins of green-washing. If you are unsure of the “sins of green washing” click here.

source: http://terrachoice.com/share/blog/

 

Toxic Tartrazine (Yellow Dye No. 5)

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You have probably never heard of tartrazine, but it is in thousands and THOUSANDS of your food products. For example, if you eat Kraft Dinner, mustard, gummy bears, popcorn, or drink Mountain Dew, chances are you’ve tried it. After all, that is what gave your food/drink product that consistent colour that kept you coming back for more. However, recently published work in reputable scientific journals has raised some serious concern over the safety of this synthetic dye/food additive in our everyday food products. Scientists are even concluding that this synthetic food colorant is “toxic” and alters the morphology as well as antioxidant capabilities of cells in animal ovaries.

Tartrazine has many names and can be disguised on your food products as as E number E102, C.I. 19140, FD&C Yellow 5, Acid Yellow 23, Food Yellow 4, and Trisodium 1-(4-sulfonatophenyl)-4-(4-sulfonatophenylazo)-5-pyrazolone-3-carboxylate).

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