Secrets to Avoiding Harmful Food Additives
Drink a diet soda and get a headache. Sip a cup of tomato soup and suddenly you feel numbness in your arms and back. You wolf down a small bag of chips and later get a stomach ache.
It is believed that since World War II more than 80,000 new man-made chemicals have been created. These chemicals are used in our cars, homes and on our jobs. But many of them appear as additions to our foods. Research has suggested that many of these food additives are making us sick.
Along with aspartame in our diet sodas, research suggests, we’re getting a carcinogen. That piping hot soup comes with a dollop of Monosodium glutamate (MSG) which causes numbness to some. That Olestra in your fat-free potato chip may be causing your severe stomach cramps.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has a database listing more than 3,000 substances which are added to our foods. The organization claims they are all safe — including some of the most controversial foods such as aspartame and MSG. But with non-smoking related cancers representing 80 percent of new cancer cases many people are crying foul saying food additives are toxic to our bodies and our health.
Safe or not safe, there is evidence to suggest that food additives are making us sick. So how do we avoid them when it seems they are everywhere? Some food additives like MSG, occur naturally. But many can be avoided. Do you really need modified food starch, Still we all can’t be organic farmers and spend all day toiling in the yard. So here are some tips on minimizing your exposure to toxic foods in your everyday life.
1. Stay in the Grocery Suburbs. If you want to avoid food additives stay away from a grocery’s urban center. Stick to the suburbs – the outskirts of the center of the store. Here on the outskirts you’ll find fresh fruits and veggies and dairy foods, plus probably some frozen veggies. These foods will be less likely to contain food additives. An apple is an apple in the suburbs. But in the center aisle, an apple can become Apple Jack’s a processed food which along with wheat has high fructose corn syrup long believed to be an obesity culprit.
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