Food Additives - the Consequences

Food additives, used by mankind for centuries, are chemicals applied to foods at home or by the food industry to improve the taste, color, texture, and longevity of food. Salt, sugar, and vinegar were among the first food additives discovered and were used both to enhance taste and to preserve foods. Although salt, smoke, spices, and sugars have been used moderately for millennia, in the past 30 years, with the advent of processed foods, there has been a massive explosion in the chemical adulteration of foods with additives. Food additive technology through research and development has become big business.

Considerable controversy has been associated with the potential threats and possible benefits of food additives. Commercial food additives are regulated in the U.S.A. by the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and food additives tend to receive the most detailed scientific attention because of regulatory scrutiny. There are literally thousands of chemical additives used in our food today, and scores of those are considered to be harmful elements. A brief discussion of the more popular additives will serve to illustrate potential health problems, and hopefully will help you begin thinking about avoiding these harmful substances:

Sulfites (Sulphites) are used as bleaching, antioxidant, and preserving additives in food. They’ve been implicated as allergens due to the fact that a typical sulfite reaction involves flushing, dizziness, shortness of breath or wheezing. Asthmatic attacks can be provoked by sulfites and a few deaths have been attributed to their consumption as well. Unfortunately sulfite sprays have been widely used on fresh produce in stores and restaurants to prevent browning due to air exposure. The huge American favorite, french-fried potatoes, are also treated in this way. As preservatives, sulfites were at one time found in processed food, alcoholic beverages (wines and beer), and drugs. Even aerosols used to treat asthmatics contained sulfites as preservatives in the past! The increased notoriety of sulfites in 1985 led to new regulations limiting their use, and the FDA has banned the use of six sulfite preservatives in fresh fruit and vegetables. However the ban still permits manufacturers of processed foods, dried fruits, wines and beer to use sulfites, although if these manufacturers are prudent on behalf of their customers, they will voluntarily restrain or curtail sulfite use.

Nitrates and Nitrites – Several chemicals used as food additives are also found naturally in many foods. Nitrates and nitrites are ever-present in plants. They form part of the essential chemistry of soils and plants, and as every gardener knows nitrogen is essential for plant growth, thus nitrogen fertilizers containing nitrates are the most abundant agricultural chemicals. Surprisingly, some very beneficial foods such as, beets, radishes, spinach, and lettuce contain the highest levels of nitrates. We know that daily nitrate consumption is estimated to be in the range of 100 mg per day.

Although nitrites do occur in nature they are less common in the food supply, but are produced in the mouth and intestine by bacterial action on protein and nitrates. Their intake is in the range of 2-3 mg per day. Nitrites, usually as sodium salts, have been used widely as preservatives, especially in bacon and other processed meats. Saltpeter is the best known nitrite with its undeserved reputation as the sex-drive inhibitor. The chief concern is the ability of nitrites to combine with amino acids in the gastro-intestinal tract (GIT) to form nitrosamines, potentially carcinogenic molecules. Vitamin C inhibits nitrosamine formation and is thought to protect against GIT cancer. Vitamin C as an antioxidant preservative, can replace less desirable preservatives in some foods. Tobacco smoke is the major source of human exposure to nitrosamines.

Salicylates are common in vegetables and fruit. Medicinal salicylates (aspirin) came from plant sources such as willow-bark methylsalicylate. As oil of wintergreen, methylsalicylate has been rubbed on many cold-stricken chests and inhaled by coughing children for years. Acetylsalicylic acid (ASA), or aspirin, is one of the most popular and useful drugs of all times. ASA is an effective drug with diverse benefits, but it routinely causes GIT irritation and bleeding. It’s a major allergen and causes many rashes and hives and can occasionally trigger asthma. Dr. Feingold postulated that salicylates and food dyes produced hyperactivity in children, popularizing low salicylate diets. Feingold recommended avoiding foods that contained natural salicylates or chemically similar substances. His lists excluded such foods as peaches and cucumber, for example, which are low in our list of symptom-producing foods.

Food Colors and preservatives have been suspected of producing allergic reactions, and behavioral disturbance for many years, and their exclusion was part of Dr. Feingold’s program for treating hyperactive children. Food colors are used liberally in all commercial food manufacture and are very popular in home use as well. We know that the yellow dye tartrazinea, and the preservative benzoate, can cause hives (urticaria). In the study of hyperactive children by Egger et al, tartrazine and benzoate were the most common substances to provoke abnormal behavior in children, although they were never the only cause of behavioral problems. Tartrazine is a yellow food color commonly found in a wide variety of manufactured foods. It produces an assortment of symptoms, typically within 90 minutes of ingestion, including asthma, hives, generalized swelling, headache, and behavior change (usually hyperactivity). Colors derived from natural plant and animal sources are usually exempt from FDA control in the US and are generally recognized as safe (GRAS). Beet pigment, beta-carotene, grape skin extract, paprika, saffron, turmeric, and vegetable juices are examples of GRAS colors. While these substances are not known to be toxic or carcinogenic, there is no assurance that they’re not allergenic or otherwise troublesome to some people. Certified colors are approved by the Food, Drug and Cosmetic act and bear the certification name FD&C Red No. 2 and so on, tartrazine being FD&C Yellow No. 15. Of the nine colors currently certified, seven may be used in amounts consistent with good manufacturing practice.

Monosodium Glutamate, well-known as MSG, is perhaps the most vilified of additives. MSG is blamed for almost everything that goes wrong in Chinese restaurants, and many people scan food product labels, rejecting any displaying MSG. Glutamate is a respectable, normal amino acid however, that is continuously present in all our cells and always available in the blood. One possibility for MSG to act in a negative fashion in the body would occur with the sudden absorption of a large amount. In this case, an individual may experience a rapid rise in blood glutamate, activating receptors which ring alarms, causing the headache and shooting pains that are associated with MSG. A variety of other symptoms are commonly reported, including flushing, numbness and tingling, chest pains, fast heart action, abdominal pains, and behavior changes such as irritability, hyperactivity, and angry outbursts. In pure form, we would not expect MSG to trigger allergic effects, however MSG products may contain allergenic contaminants from vegetable sources including corn, beets, and wheat. Often MSG is mixed with a common enzyme (Papain) in commercial food enhancers such as “Accent”. Papain is derived from Papaya and is a protein allergen, so it’s possible that MSG is often blamed for the allergenicity of papain. Papain is sometimes injected into ruptured intervertebral discs as an alternative to back surgery. The injection is potentially dangerous if the patient has been previously sensitized to papain by ingestion.

Aspartame, a well known popular artificial sweetener, contains two normal amino acids, phenylalanine and aspartic acid and is well tolerated in reasonable doses. The fact that combining them produced a sweet taste was a surprise (and lucrative) discovery. Problems with ingesting large amounts might occur in people with known phenylalanine intolerance. In addition, excess phenylalanine could affect brain function adversely by increasing excitability of brain cells and, in the worse case, promoting seizures. Occasional reports of “allergic” reactions to aspartame are surprising since this molecule should not act as an allergen.

As we all become informed and educated about how chemical additives in our foods affect our bodies, we will be able to make better informed choices to insure our health and well being. It is this author’s hope that more and more Americans will make healthy, organic, unprocessed foods a larger part of their daily diets.