Researchers have found that chicken has high amounts of arsenic in it. What? Yes you read that correctly. Arsenic. Okay, now that you’ve gotten over the shock, let’s get down to business. Arsenic based additives (roxasone) are basically used to make the chicken grow larger and make the meat look more appealing so that you’ll buy more. (source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070409115746.htm) Read the rest of this entry »
By now most people will be familiar with M.S.G. and the scare behind ingesting it. Some claim that they have allergic reactions, while others claim that it does nothing at all. Monosodium Glutamate was probably made most popular by Chinese restaurants (most restaurants now taut that the food they serve is “M.S.G.-Free”). Basically M.S.G. is an amino acid and a salt that is naturally occurring in fermented foods such as soy sauce, miso and certain cheeses. Below is a picture of extracted and refined M.S.G.
Basically M.S.G. is an excitotoxin that stimulates the taste bud receptors that are responsible for the “meaty” or “savory” taste sensation. (This is an addition to the 4 basic tastes: sweet, bitter, sour, and salty).
1866 – M.S.G. was discovered by a German chemist (Karl Heinrich Leopold Ritthausen).
1907 – Isolation and mass production of M.S.G. discovered by Kikunae Ikeda.
1959 – FDA classifies M.S.G. as a “generally recognized as safe” substance (G.R.A.S.)
1968 – Ho Man Kwok writes an article for the New England Journal of Medicine to state some of the side effects he experienced after eating M.S.G.
1978 – Research shows that M.S.G. intake may linked to increase in obesity due to the down-regulation of appetite suppression in the brain.
1987 – M.S.G. placed in the ’safest categories of food’ ingredients by the Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization.
1991 – The European Community’s (EC) Scientific Committee for Food claims that M.S.G. is an essentially safe food additive and that infants and children can metabolize the compound just as effectively as adults.
1992 – The Council on Scientific Affairs of the American Medical Association states that M.S.G. has not shown to be a significant health hazard.
1993 – FDA proposes that all food labels should contain the phrase ‘contains glutamate‘ if the product contains some type of hydrolyzed protein. (There’s M.S.G. listed on this food label).
1994 – FDA receives a citizen’s petition for a mandatory labeling of all foods containing M.S.G.
1995 – FDA commissioned reports the “M.S.G. syndrome complex” which exhibits the following symptom profile:
2002 – Research done at Hirosaki University showed that rats fed a diet high in M.S.G. suffered damage to the eye, which they then extrapolated to the high incidence of normal-tension glaucoma in eastern asia.
2006 – Research shows M.S.G. is linked to an increase in obesity. The study states the M.S.G. “at concentrations that only slightly surpass those found in everyday human food, exhibits significant potential for damaging the hypothalamic regulation of appetite, and thereby determines the propensity of world-wide obesity.”
Did you catch something fishy in that timeline above? Did you notice that the FDA classifies M.S.G. as “generally recognized as safe? (G.R.A.S).” What exactly does that mean? Well according to the FDA website:
Generally recognized as safe (G.R.A.S.)–substances for which use in food has a proven track record of safety based either on a history of use before 1958 or on published scientific evidence, and that need not be approved by the FDA prior to being used.
Under sections 201(s) and 409 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (the Act), any substance that is intentionally added to food is a food additive, that is subject to premarket review and approval by FDA, unless the substance is generally recognized, among qualified experts, as having been adequately shown to be safe under the conditions of its intended use, or unless the use of the substance is otherwise excluded from the definition of a food additive. For example, substances whose use meets the definition of a pesticide, a dietary ingredient of a dietary supplement, a color additive, a new animal drug, or a substance approved for such use prior to September 6, 1958, are excluded from the definition of food additive. Sections 201(s) and 409 were enacted in 1958 as part of the Food Additives Amendment to the Act. While it is impracticable to list all ingredients whose use is generally recognized as safe, FDA published a partial list of food ingredients whose use is generally recognized as safe to aid the industry’s understanding of what did not require approval.
FDA has defined “safe” (21 CFR 170.3(i)) as a reasonable certainty in the minds of competent scientists that the substance is not harmful under its intended conditions of use. The specific data and information that demonstrate safety depend on the characteristics of the substance, the estimated dietary intake, and the population that will consume the substance.
For a G.R.A.S. substance, generally available data and information about the use of the substance are known and accepted widely by qualified experts, and there is a basis to conclude that there is consensus among qualified experts that those data and information establish that the substance is safe under the conditions of its intended use.
Must FDA approve G.R.A.S. substances?
No. If the use of a food substance is G.R.A.S., it is not subject to the premarket review and approval requirement by FDA.
Basically what this boils down to is that we’re letting the opinions of these so-called experts determine what is considered safe to ingest and what isn’t. It’s time that we become proactive about our health. It’s time that we take responsibility in monitoring what we’re putting in our bodies. The FDA can only do so much to protect us from harmful chemicals, but it is our job to make sure and read the labels to see what may potentially be harmful to us.
My best advice to you: if you don’t feel good after you eat something (and you didn’t already check the labels or ask what was in the food), stop eating it. Even if M.S.G. is considered G.R.A.S., I would still err on the side of caution. I mean, one less excitotoxin may actually do you some good.
