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Saturday, October 4, 2008

Unsafe Food Additives

Butylated Hydroxyanisole (BHA): Helps prevent rancidity in fats, oils and food containing oils. According to the US government's National Toxicology Program it is "reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen", based on animal studies.

Partially Hydrogenated Oil: Oils can be made into semi-solid shortenings and margarine by chemically adding hydrogen. This process creates trans fats, which raise bad cholesterol and lower good cholesterol.

Propyl Gallate: Preservative. The best studies hinted that it might cause cancer.

Information Source: Nutrition Action

Want help remembering what chemicals to avoid check out my quick guide to chemical additives.

3 comments:

Jane said...

This is good information! But please add a few more bad guys to the list. Petroleum-based food dyes are a huge offender. There are many studies showing that these pretty colors have an ugly side...see www.diet-studies.com.
And let's not forget aspartame, MSG, and sodium benzoate.

Pierrette said...

Hi Jane,

Thanks, I have some blog entries to be published latter regarding aspartame and MSG; however I did not realize that Sodium Benzoate was evil. I just looked it up - thank you.

Do you know the individual names of the petroleum-based food dyes. I generally avoid all food with artificial colour; however I like to know the individual names of the food additives.

I have on my quick reference guide when I shop already the following food dyes:

Brilliant Blue FCF
Erythrosine
Fast Green FCF
Indigotine
Sunset Yellow FCF

Did you check out the list:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pXvBI6IYYpg7LByX_UaKtMQ

Jane said...

Two that are missing from that list are tartrazine (yellow 5) and amaranth (red 40). But since you are in Canada, you probably have red 2, but not red 40. However, yellow 5 is probably in many of your foods.
Here in the US the dyes are always listed (or supposed to be listed) with their color + number, so all a consumer needs to do is stay away from this combination.