The French Don't Diet Plan
Page 33
The Harvard School of Public Health recently pointed out that cutting back on trans fatty acids could save your life. Metabolic studies clearly show that trans fats increase your LDL (“bad”) cholesterol and decrease your HDL (“good”) cholesterol—a deadly combination for your heart.
More bad news. Epidemiological studies have shown that eating foods with trans fats is associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease. That’s why, in their article “Trans Fatty Acids and Coronary Heart Disease: Background and Scientific Review” for the School of Public Health, the Harvard people say that the threat to your life is even greater from these oils than from plain saturated fats. “By our most conservative estimate, replacement of partially hydrogenated fat in the U.S. diet with natural unhydrogenated vegetable oils would prevent approximately 30,000 premature coronary deaths per year, and epidemiologic evidence suggests this number is closer to 100,000 premature deaths annually. These reductions are higher than what could be achieved with realistic reductions in saturated fat intake.”
So have a bit of butter on your bread, but skip the fast-food french fries and any processed food product with hydrogenated oil.
Lactic Acid
What is it?
Bacteria live in our guts and produce this acid during the natural fermentation of sugar. It’s actually vital to our digestion. Our muscles also make lactic acid, but not as a result of bacterial activity. It’s a waste product that occurs when they contract too much, and it eventually causes cramps.
What is it doing in my food?
Lactic acid is put in foods as a preservative and stabilizer for fat-reduced food products, in processed cheese, frozen desserts, and carbonated beverages. It is also added to provide tartness. In common fermented products such as sauerkraut, yogurt, and sourdough bread, natural lactic acid is produced by the starter culture bacteria to prevent the growth of undesirable microorganisms and (in the case of the bread) to give it that signature tartness.
What is it doing in my body?
Lactic acid–producing bacteria have been implicated as potent anticancer agents, particularly for the colon. Moreover, the cultures found in yogurt boost both the intestinal and systemic immune systems. Even better, bread made with natural bacteria starters have been shown to improve glucose tolerance.
Lactic acid bacteria in foods like yogurt definitely aid digestion. But this doesn’t mean that adding the lactic acid chemical to food products has the same effect as is produced by microorganisms. The context in which the molecule is delivered matters. In other words, the lactic acid found in soda will not have the same beneficial effect as you will get by eating naturally fermented foods.
MSG and Its Derivatives
What is it?
Monosodium glutamate is the sodium salt of L-glutamate, an amino acid.
What is it doing in my food?
MSG is used as a flavor enhancer. The Center for Science in the Public Interest points out that its use allows food companies to lower the amount of real ingredients (such as chicken) they include in their foods (such as chicken soup).
What is it doing in my body?
Scientists use MSG as a way to induce obesity in lab animals. In combination with a high caloric diet, MSG has also been shown to cause oxidative stress in the liver. In people, physical reactions to MSG can include headache, tingling, weakness, stomachache, migraine, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, tightness of the chest, skin rash, or sensitivity to light, noise, or smells. Despite these issues, the FDA and an independent scientific panel (FASEB) have cleared MSG for public consumption.
Be careful though, because MSG is often found in food products but labeled in other ways: monosodium glutamate, glutamic acid, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, hydrolyzed protein, hydrolyzed plant protein, plant protein extract, sodium caseinate, calcium caseinate, yeast extract, textured protein, autolyzed yeast, hydrolyzed oat flour, corn oil. If you find these ingredients on your food label, you’ll also find MSG in the product.
Nitrates and Nitrites
What are they?
The chemical formula for nitrite is NO2, and for nitrate it’s NO3. These are both forms of nitrogen commonly produced when ammonium is chemically modified by certain bacteria.
What is it doing in my food?
These are used in processed meats to preserve them (nitrates are very toxic to bacteria). They also happen to be useful for the food companies to prevent the red color of meat from naturally changing to brown.
What is it doing in my body?
When nitrates are ingested, the body sends them through a cascade of reactions. They are first converted into nitrites, which then get converted into N-nitrosamines, which cause colorectal cancer in lab animals. Nitrites also change the iron of your hemoglobin into methemoglobin, which cannot transport oxygen well and can cause tissue asphyxia. This poses the greatest threat for infants, and has been linked to “blue baby disease.”
Although vegetables also contain nitrites, they do not cause a cancer risk because they are typically co-localized with high concentrations of vitamin C, which prevents the formation of the N-nitrosamines. In fact, some corporations have started adding ascorbic acid or erythorbic acid to bacon to try to inhibit nitrosamine formation.
All these issues are exactly why you hear the recommendations to limit nitrites in your foods—particularly processed meats.
Phosphoric Acid
What is it?
Phosphoric acid can be made in two ways, either by the wet process or the thermal (furnace) process. In the wet process, mined phosphate ore is treated with sulfuric acid and detergents. Otherwise, phosphorus is reheated until it becomes liquid and is burned into a new form, phosphorus pentoxide (P2O5). This is mixed with the low concentration phosphoric acid and, after a purification process, stored for further processing. Phosphoric acid is corrosive to concrete, most metals, and fabrics.
What is it doing in my food?
Phosphoric acid is used, not surprisingly, to acidify the flavors of soft drinks, jellies, frozen dairy products, bakery products, candy, and cheese products. It is also used as a sequestrant in hair tonics, nail polishes, and skin fresheners. Oddly enough, it was recently added to the drinking water in Winnipeg—not because the drinking water needed a bit more tang to it, but to fight the problem of lead accumulating along sewer pipes. It seems that lead builds up along the pipes, and phosphoric acid slows its reaction and release into the water.
What is it doing in my body?
Phosphoric acid can siphon off your calcium, so you excrete it from your body. When your body loses calcium, it pulls what it needs from your bones. There is a “brittle bone syndrome” in women that is associated with soda consumption, and it’s thought to result from the loss of calcium due to the phosphoric acid found in soda.
Phosphates themselves are vital to your health, especially the mineral phosphorus. In fact, the B vitamins niacin and riboflavin are not even digested in the absence of phosphorus. It is also required for healthy bones, teeth, muscles, and even makes up part of your DNA and RNA. Phosphorus regulates energy metabolism, helps the body absorb glucose, and controls the pH balance throughout the body.
But you don’t have to get your phosphates from soft drink additives! Just eat real foods, such as fish, eggs, poultry, beans, and nuts. Nothing special is required, and you don’t even have to be vegetarian, vegan, or shop at the health food store. Adults require 700 milligrams per day, so if you had three pancakes in the morning (about 400 milligrams) and one cup of chili with beans for lunch (about 400), you’d have all you needed right there.
Potassium Bromate
What is it?
The chemical formula for potassium bromate is KBrO3.
What is it doing in my food?
Potassium bromate is used to increase the volume of bread and to improve its texture. It is also used in the production of fish paste and fermented drinks. Potassium bromate has been banned in most countries. Only the United States and Japan still allow this
chemical in their foods.
What is it doing in my body?
I’m just going to show you what’s written, in capital letters, on the Materials Safety Data Sheet for this chemical: “Danger! May be fatal if swallowed. Harmful if inhaled or absorbed through skin. Causes irritation to skin, eyes, and respiratory tract. May cause kidney damage.” This is admittedly written for the powdered form not already put into foods, but it’s still arresting to see, especially when you go on to read that potassium bromate is the standard method of choice to induce renal cancer in laboratory animals.
The food companies still using potassium bromate say that it gets broken down to harmless bromide in the body, but this has definitely not been demonstrated by research, which consistently finds bromate residues in bread products.
Propyl Gallate
What is it?
Also known as gallic acid, propyl ester, and n-propyl gallate, propyl gallate is synthesized by the esterification of gallic acid. A drawback for the food industry is that it is unstable at high temperatures.
What is it doing in my food?
Often used in concert with BHA and BHT to chemically preserve fats and oils. Propyl gallate is commonly found in margarine, lard, cereals, snack foods, and salad dressings.
What is it doing in my body?
Propyl gallate can cause gastric irritation and is not permitted for children due to its link with a blood disorder known as methemoglobinemia.
In a 2004 study published in the journal Mutation Research, a Japanese research group stated flat out that “propyl gallate, widely used as an antioxidant in foods, is carcinogenic to mice and rats.” The results from other studies have been mixed but, at the very least, the potential for this chemical to cause cancer is clear.
Red No. 40 Dye
What is it?
Red No. 40 is a great name. Can you imagine how large the ingredient list would be if they had to write the real name on all the products that contain this?
2-NAPHTHALENESULFONIC ACID, 6-HYDROXY-5-(2-METHOXY-5-METHYL-4-SULFOPHENYL)AZO), DISODIUM SALT. Whew! The National Academy of Sciences reported that Red No. 40 is the most used colorant with a total daily intake, on average, of 100 milligrams. Yellow No. 5 was a distant second with 43 milligrams. Red No. 40 is derived from coal tar.
What is it doing in my food?
Coloring food is not new. But before the mid-1850s, all dyes were naturally derived. Red No. 40, introduced in the 1960s and approved in the mid-1970s, is now one of only nine colors accepted by the FDA. It reddens our gelatins, puddings, food products, candies, sodas, and the bizarre assortment of ketchup colors.
What is it doing in my body?
Our official food protection agency, the FDA, approved Red No. 40 for this huge daily consumption, but some doctors have suggested that it’s not as safe as generally thought. One study in the journal Toxicology reported that Red No. 40 reduced reproductive success, resulting in a degree of wasting in offspring brain weight, a general decrease in survival, as well as a decrease in normal vaginal development. It also decreased general activity levels described as “physical and behavioral toxicity” in developing animals. Another study in Toxicological Science determined the genotoxicity (read, dangerous to your genes) of several synthetic red tar dyes such as Red No. 40. The result? It’s not pretty. DNA damage, particularly in the colon. This, it is now known, can lead to cancer.
Bottom line? We’ll probably never be able to find out definitively whether the Red No. 40 in your maraschino cherries contributes to cancer, but the research results suggest that it has that potential.
Silicone Dioxide
What is it?
Sand. No kidding. Silicone dioxide—and this is straight out of the dictionary—occurs “abundantly as quartz, sand, flint, agate, and is used to manufacture a wide variety of materials, notably glass and concrete.” Hmm.
What is it doing in my food?
In addition to your food, it’s used in foot powder for the same purpose—to prevent clumping. It’s called a “flowing agent” because it allows products like boxed cake mix to pour well after a very long time on the shelf. Without silicone dioxide, the mix would eventually pack down and turn into a brick known as the “tombstone.” If you don’t want a tombstone on your shelf, just refine some sand and toss it in there.
What is it doing in my body?
About thirty years ago now, a World Health Organization (WHO) Expert Committee on Food Additives met and determined that eating sand wasn’t bad for you. It doesn’t seem to build up in your tissues, and it doesn’t get excreted out by your kidneys. This opinion seems to have held up over time, because there has been no more significant work done on this substance in our foods.
Stevia
What is it?
Stevioside. This is a derivative of a natural South American shrub. It is formed from steviol, glucose, and diterpenic carboxylic alcohol.
What is it doing in my food?
Stevioside is about 150 times sweeter than sugar, although it’s accompanied by a licorice-like aftertaste. It’s not actually in your food yet, because it can’t get approval. The FDA, the European Union, and the Canadians have all rejected it.
What is it doing in my body?
Metabolites of stevia (steviol) can reduce fertility in females, and can also result in low birth weight offspring. Incidentally, the indigenous people of Paraguay have used the plant itself as an oral contraceptive.
Steviol has been shown to reduce sperm count in males, and it has the ability to induce mutations of your DNA (Pezzuto, 1985). This compound can also interfere with food metabolism. For these and other reasons, the joint FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations)/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives has requested further research on stevioside to be submitted by 2007 to determine its safety.
Sulfites (Sulfer Dioxide and Sodium Bisulfite)
What is it?
Sulfur dioxide (SO2) is produced by reacting sulfur with oxygen by burning sulfur in air (as such, it’s a dangerous pollutant). Sodium bisulfite (NaHSO3) is made by dissolving sulfur dioxide in an alkaline solution.
What is it doing in my food?
Sodium bisulfite is used in almost all commercial wines, except for organic wines, as a preservative. You’ll also find sulfites used as a preservative in shrimp, frozen potatoes, cookies, pie dough, bottled lemon juice, and dried fruit. In 1986, the FDA banned the use of sulfites on fruits and vegetables that are eaten raw, such as lettuce or apples, as well as on fresh meat and poultry products. They are also used to keep the food looking as if it’s not as old as it really is.
What is it doing in my body?
Sulfites can destroy thiamine (that’s vitamin B1), which is critical for nervous system function, normal learning, and digestion. The FDA estimates that 1 percent of people are sensitive to these compounds, although you can develop hypersensitivity to sulfites at any time in your life—and the results can vary from mild to life threatening.
Incidentally, sulfites do not cause red wine headaches. Some people are allergic to sulfites, but this results in flu-like symptoms, not headaches. Red wine headaches are similar to migraines and may be caused by the histamines present in the wine.
TBHQ
What is it?
Tert-butylhydroquinone (TBHQ) is the common acronym for 2-tertiary butyl 1,4 dihydroxy benzene.
What is it doing in my food?
TBHQ is put in our food because it’s a very cheap stabilizer for various edible oils and fats. Like so many other chemical additions, this is put into food products in order to extend the shelf life.
What is it doing in my body?
Researchers at St. John’s University in New York have now shown the biochemical pathway this molecule can take to produce cancer. Apparently, it can interact with the copper in your body to derange your DNA. This is straight from their report: “Taken together, the above results conclusively demonstrate that the activation of TBHQ by [copper] … may participate in oxi
dative DNA damage in both isolated DNA and intact cells. These reactions may contribute to the carcinogenicity as well as other biochemical activities observed with BHA in animals.”
Although prior studies had not found links between cancer and TBHQ alone, the new results show that TBHQ can react synergistically to cause cancers. For example, a Japanese research group recently reported in the journal Cancer Letters an interaction between TBHQ and other preservatives, which caused the proliferation of stomach tumors.
Appendix III
Food Sources of Vitamins and Minerals