healthnut

Formaldehyde in cheese?… Look what Gatorade contains…. Be sure to click on the link for the video.

http://www.wvec.com/news/local/stories/wvec_local_070907_food_ingredients.4bcee15c.html

Scientist explains what’s in the foods we eat

11:20 PM EDT on Monday, July 9, 2007

By 13News

We buy it, we eat it and we like it, but do you really know what’s in your food.

You’d have to be a scientist to understand some of the chemical compounds listed as ingredients on some foods.

Dr. Ron Gaddis, a Webster University biological sciences professor, pharmacologist and toxicologist, says some common food additives sound threatening and might be.

Beer, butter, cereal and snack foods have an ingredient found in jet fuel. Butylated hydroxytoluene, also known as BHT, stops oxygen from causing foods to lose their color and freshness.

Some countries banned BHT and some U.S. companies voluntarily stopped using it because in large quantities it can cause cancer in lab animals. The preservative, which is used in bubble gum, is used in very small quantities.

The sports drink Gatorade contains glycerol ester of wood rosin, harvested from the stumps of the longleaf pine and used to keep oils from separating in liquids. It isn’t considered dangerous.

Acesulfame-potassium is on the label of drinks like Red Bull and Coke Aero. It’s an artificial sweetener that some people are concerned could have health risks, but the FDA has declared it safe.

A common red food coloring, used in yogurts and mixed fruits, called cochineal scores a high “yuck” factor because it’s made from bugs. That’s right, bugs. Crushed cochineal insects have been used for their red dye since the days of the Aztec Indians.

If you’ve eaten Doritos, then you’ve eaten coal tar. The yellow food coloring in Doritos and Diet Mountain Dew is called tartrazine and comes from coal tar, a gooey bi-product from burning coal.

Some countries banned tartrazine because of allergic reactions, but the FDA considers both food colorings as well as red dye 40, a possible carcinogen, to be safe when used in such small amounts.

Formaldehyde was used for embalming, and it’s still used as a food preservative, sometimes in cheeses. Dr. Gaddis says you probably inhale more than you eat.

Also Online

Guide to food additives

Benzene is used in explosives and is a known carcinogen. Exposure to light sometimes causes it to form in soft drinks which contain the preservative benzoate.

It’s also in gasoline. When you smell the fumes, you’re inhaling benzene, which is why there are warnings on gas pumps.

Phenol is used as a weed killer. . It’s also used as a preservative in antiseptic throat sprays. But it has a connection to Nazi Germay. The Nazis injected it directly into the heart for rapid executions in concentration camps

Acetaldehyde, a naturally occurring compound in soy sauce and wine, is used to flavor foods and is also used in disinfectants, explosives and varnishes. It’s a known carcinogen but used in small quantities is considered safe by the FDA.

I was passing the produce isle last night and noticed the cello bags of carrots were marked, “Fresh”. I knew these couldn’t be “Fresh” because most of the carrots inside were cracked, a sign that the carrots have aged. As carrots lose their water content, they will crack. That’s also why they are harder to dice than the fresh ones.

If you have some Pepsi or Coke lying around the house, here’s a great way to get rid of them. Simply extend the collar of the bottle with some paper. Drop a few menthos and let it burst. The results are different each time. It may shoot up 7 or 8 ft or burst into a slow waterfall. Enjoy!

http://www.drchef.com/bonus_years/content-view/48/index.html

Misconception #1: Calories don’t count

But they do. Ultimately, to lose weight, you need to burn more calories than you eat. It’s that simple. Some of the recent fad diets claim that your hormones, rather than too many calories, make you gain weight. Get the right hormone balance (e.g. insulin), they assert, and you can just forget about calories. But in the end, the body’s hormones respond to its caloric intake. Eat more calories than you expend, whether those calories are from fat, carbohydrates or protein, and the body has to somehow store them. Unfortunately, the body has only one major long-term storage depot, and that’s fat.

Misconception #2: Excess calories from carbohydrates causes more weight gain than those from protein

Again,any excess calories,whether from carbohydrates,fat or protein, will ultimately be stored as fat. The body is,however,more efficient at storing excess calories from fat than excess calories from protein or carbohydrates. That’s because ingested fat (the fat in the foods we eat) has almost the exact same chemical structure as the stored fat in your body—so it requires very little chemical manipulation to store ingested fat. About 98% of excess calories ingested from fat will be stored. Excess calories from protein and carbohydrates require significant energy to convert them into fat, meaning that about 75% of these surplus calories typically wind up as stored body fat.

Misconception #3: High protein/low carbohydrate diets must be good because people lose weight

Any diet in which you take in less calories than you burn will allow you to lose weight. Eat 1,200 calories of chocolate a day and you are guaranteed to lose weight—although most of us would agree that this isn’t a very nutritious plan. So the question isn’t whether you can lose weight on a given diet. That’s the easy part. It’s whether the diet is sustainable over a lifetime, while promoting health and protecting against disease. Without the necessary carbohydrates required to efficiently burn fat, the high protein/low carbohydrate diets cause the blood to become too acidic, due to an abnormal accumulation of fat metabolites (a process called ketosis). The body’s response is to break down bone to buffer this excess acidity, promoting osteoporosis. Furthermore, ketosis is metabolically an unnatural state which often leads to fatigue and nausea, in addition to bone loss. The initial weight loss experienced with high protein/low carbohydrate diets is due to decreased body water, not fat. When confronted with a very low-carbohydrate diet, the body responds by first mobilizing its glucose stores in the liver and muscle. The stored glucose is actually packaged into the compound glycogen, which has a water coating. The water, which is removed when the stored glucose(glycogen) is utilized for energy, and then eliminated in the urine. This, along with the diuresis induced by the excess ketone bodies accounts for the prominent initial weight loss—weight that’s gained right back after a normal carbohydrate balance is restored.

Misconception #4: You need to avoid foods such as carrots, parsnips and beets

A good diet is a balanced diet, and should include these and other fruits and vegetables which provide you with many needed micronutrients and phytochemicals. One would have to eat unrealistically large amounts of these foods to get a significant insulin response. The total insulin effect of a meal depends on the proportional contribution of each of the individual foods we eat. By balancing your meals with high- and low-glycemic index foods, you modulate your insulin response. The total calories provide the best measure of the actual insulin response to a meal. So eat less, and you’ll lower your insulin levels and lose weight.

Misconception #5: A high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet reduces insulin levels

The amino acids in protein act by themselves as a powerful stimulus to insulin release. In addition, protein increases the insulin release triggered by carbohydrates. So substituting protein for carbohydrates in hopes of lowering your insulin levels doesn’t make much sense. The best way to ensure lower insulin levels is, again, just to eat less.

A few years ago, a friend of mine emailed these weight loss strategies:

1) You walka pasta da bakery.

2) You walka pasta da candy store.

3) You walka pasta da ice cream shop.

4) You walk pasta table and fridge.

YOU WILL LOSE WEIGHT!