Scary food facts
- “An hour after munching on some light potato chips – made with fat substitute olestra — Debra Jaliman, 55, a Manhattan dermatologist, found herself so sick with abdominal cramps that she had to cancel her slate of patients. Reactions like these are why the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer advocacy organization, says no one should eat olestra, and why Canada and the United Kingdom banned it. But it’s legal here… Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone, or rBGH (commonly sold under the name Posilac), a synthetic hormone injected into cows to stimulate milk production, pops up in many dairy-based snacks like ice cream. Not in the European Union or Canada, where it has been banned amid health concerns for both cows and humans.”
- “We added pulverized insects to your snack. …[C]arcasses of ground-up, boiled beetles… are often used in snack foods to create those lovely shades of red, purple and pink in everything from fruit juice to ice cream to candy. ‘It’s a common colorant,’ Baldwin says. No, you won’t find the word ‘beetle’ anywhere on food labels; instead, you’ll likely see the less cringe-worthy ‘carmine,’ ‘carminic acid’ or ‘cochineal extract.’”
- “There are pig bones in your pudding [and jello]”
- “‘Natural’ is naturally meaningless”
- “The U.S. food and beverage industry spends $10 to $12 billion each year — or more than $1 million per hour — marketing to children”
- “Each year, more than 300,000 Americans are hospitalized and 5,000 die from contaminated foods and beverages, according to the Department of Health and Human Services…. And these are just the cases that we know about. Of the 51,229 food processing and manufacturing facilities regulated by the FDA, 56% have not been inspected at all in the past five years.”
- “When we say ‘enriched,’ we mean processed.”
Posted by James on Friday, November 19, 2010