Demand safe food.
— Frances M. Lappé, Diet for a Small Planet
Would you choose to sprinkle ¼ ounce of pesticides over your food every day? Or to ingest 150 pounds of assorted additives annually? Of course not. But in effect, that's what the average American--however unwittingly--is doing. As a nation, our annual dose of these seriously life-threatening chemicals is a staggering 2.6 billion pounds, or more than 1 million tons.
Because they are colorless, odorless, and tasteless, and because they don't make you sick (at least not right away), these substances are pretty much overlooked. The slowness with which they wreak havoc inside our bodies lulls us into denial. The insidious diseases spawned by these contaminants surface slowly--we're talking decades here--and only after irreparable damage has been done. Any serious anti-aging regimen must include a commitment to curtail exposure to these life-shortening agents.
First, let's take a look at the baddest of these bad guys: pesticides. Then we'll move on to the omnipresent additives. Finally, we'll discuss what we can do to protect ourselves and our environment--which is a lot!
Suppose you're having dinner in a fancy restaurant. You're starved, so when the waiter finally brings your food, you can't wait to dig in. As you lift your fork, the waiter motions toward your plate and looks at you with that familiar "May I . . . ?" expression that waiters get when they're holding a pepper grinder over your salad. Except this isn't pepper.
"What is it?" you ask.
"Our special blend of PCBs, EDB, and dieldrin, with a dollop of DDT, a dash of dioxin, and some other assorted pesticides," he casually replies.
"No, thanks," you say, shaking your head.
"But, sir, I insist," he says.
"No, thanks!" you repeat firmly.
Undaunted, he sprinkles a layer of the lethal blend over your entire meal. Then he turns and walks away before you regain your composure enough to give him a piece of your mind.
Now, you may be thinking that this scenario, while scary, would never play out in real life. And you're probably right. The trouble is, these toxins are showing up in your food anyway--and no one has ever asked your permission.
More than one billion pounds of pesticides--or about five pounds per person--is applied to our nation's food supply each year. Yet the scientific evidence condemning this practice is unequivocal.
Pesticides (including herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides) are not inert, innocuous substances, as those in big agribusiness would have you believe. Rather, they are chemicals specially designed to destroy life by disrupting biological systems. The human body happens to be a complex, intricate set of biological systems, so to even suggest that pesticides don't have a destructive effect inside the body is foolish.
Pesticides kill weeds, insects, fungi, and other "undesirable" life forms by interfering with various aspects of their metabolism. Humans are fundamentally similar to these organisms in that all are complex conglomerations of cells. At the cellular level, there is no real difference in how the poison works. Our size is what saves us. We are larger and more diversified, so we resist the toxic effects of pesticides much longer than a tiny plant or bug. If humans were the size of bugs, we'd perish as fast as they do.
Pesticides accumulate in our bodies, gradually weakening our most sensitive cellular components--especially those of the endocrine (hormone), reproductive, circulatory, immune, and central nervous systems. Over time, they increase the likelihood of heart disease, cancer, and allergies; undermine resistance to infectious organisms; impair fertility; and contribute to miscarriages and birth defects. That they make longevity nosedive goes without saying.
In the presence of pesticides, the Renewal process falters and eventually falls apart. No wonder Rachel Carson, in her seminal 1962 book, Silent Spring, dubbed these chemicals elixirs of death.
Thanks to the overzealous application of pesticides to U.S. agricultural products, our food supply is largely contaminated. As Frances Moore Lappé notes in her book Diet for a Small Planet, "Pesticides have made fresh produce, the very symbol of health, into a health hazard."
But if produce has become a health hazard, then animal-derived foods might be considered downright lethal. Because the chemicals sprayed onto feed are concentrated in animals' bodies, they're found in much greater quantity in beef, poultry, and dairy products. Whereas fruits, vegetables, and grains account for 11 percent of pesticide exposures, meat and dairy account for 78 percent.
But food isn't the only source of these toxic time bombs (so called because of the delayed onset of the diseases they trigger). Pesticides poison our air and water as well as our home, work, vacation, and entertainment environments. In fact, while many people equate farming with pesticide use, the average concentration of pesticides is actually 10 times higher in the typical American home than on the farm. These toxins are also used extensively in hospitals, schools, and offices.
Outdoors, pesticides are sprayed on lawns, lakes, forests, parks, and playing fields. Through storm drains, sewers, creeks, and rivers, pesticides find their way to the ocean, where they account for more than 90 percent of the water's pollution. A nationwide survey conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found that 100 million Americans are drinking water from pesticide-contaminated water supplies. Of drinking water samples tested in intensely farmed regions of the country, 82 percent contained two or more pesticides. A U.S. Geological Service survey of water from the Mississippi River and its tributaries found herbicide contamination in nearly every sample collected.
Pesticides are not just around you but inside of you as well. All of your tissues are tainted. You--like all other Americans--have measurable levels of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dioxin, heptachlor, chlordane, aldrin, dieldrin, and other pesticides in your bloodstream. The frightening fact is that these poisons have saturated your internal environment as well as your external environment.
Many--perhaps most--pesticides are carcinogens. Yet only a handful (about 10 percent) have been adequately tested for human health risks before being approved for use on food. Shamefully, governmental regulation of these extremely hazardous substances is virtually nonexistent. The EPA evaluates pesticides as if the rules of democracy apply. Pesticides are not people: They should be assumed guilty until proven innocent, not the other way around.
Pesticide tolerance limits are not set with the health of human consumers in mind. Instead, they reflect the highest residue concentrations under normal use in the field, not on the plate. Richard Jackson, M.D., a California pediatrician and co-author of the 1993 National Academy of Sciences study "Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children," compares these lax tolerance levels with "setting the speed limit at 7,000 miles per hour and then congratulating yourself when no one exceeds it."
The only effective solution to the problem of toxic foods is protective action on an individual level. This means eating only organically grown, pesticide-free foods. (More on this at the end of the chapter.)
For most humans, short-term pesticide exposure won't cause noticeable health problems. It is the cumulative effect of these diabolical agents that really does the damage. Because the body cannot efficiently remove them, they build up in tissues to levels capable of really bollixing things up.
The following is a sampling of commonly encountered pesticides and their adverse health effects.
When the immune system becomes impaired, the body cannot fight cancer effectively. All five of the most commonly used pesticides--atrazine, alachlor, metolachlor, 1,3-dichloropropene, and 2,4-D--are associated with increased risk of cancer. They're also associated with reproductive damage and birth defects.
In the reproductive system, many pesticides can harm the fetus directly, causing miscarriages, stillbirths, birth defects, and genetic mutations. Pesticide-induced mutations can be passed to the next generation and so can potentially affect the grandchildren or great-grandchildren of the person who has been exposed.
Another grim reminder of the pervasiveness of these chemicals is the fact that 99 percent of mothers' milk in the United States contains dangerous levels of DDT. Meat-eating mothers have 35 times the breast milk contamination of vegetarian mothers.
A great many of the most widely used pesticides--including the pervasive, hard-to-break-down old-timers (DDT, PCBs, and dioxin) as well as their newer cousins (whose toxicity remains largely a matter of speculation)--are now known to mimic naturally produced estrogenic hormones. They do this by tightly binding to hormone receptor sites in the body, thus discombobulating the highly choreographed ballet that leading progesterone researcher John Lee, M.D., of Sebastopol, California, has aptly dubbed the Dance of the Steroids. At least 50 of these hormone receptorblocking synthetic chemicals have now been identified, and scads more are waiting in the wings.
For a long time, pesticide-watchers have known that strange things were happening, endocrinologically speaking. But only recently has the connection between pesticides and hormone receptor site contamination been clarified.
Nature designed hormones to act as triggers for cascades of biochemical reactions, so they are effective in unbelievably small quantities. Likewise, the hormone impostors are effective in minute doses, causing abnormal functioning of the immune, reproductive, and central nervous systems. Researchers have linked a diverse array of reproductive system and developmental disorders--including endometriosis, prostate cancer, and smaller brain size--to these hormone impostors. Some examples:
Perhaps most ominous are the bizarre reproductive effects of the hormone impostors, which have been amply documented in both laboratory animals and human population studies. Among American men, for example, the incidence of testicular cancer is rising. Fertility, meanwhile, is sagging. More than 25 percent of male college students in the United States are sterile, compared with only 0.5 percent in 1950. And the average sperm count has dropped by 30 percent over three decades.
Women, who have more estrogen and more estrogenic receptors than men, are also more vulnerable to the hormone impostors. Breast cancer, a genuine epidemic, is a hormonally dependent disease affecting 1 in 10 women in the United States. Hormone-mimicking pesticides are found in high concentrations in breast tissue that has become cancerous. A study conducted at Hartford Hospital in Connecticut found higher concentrations of DDT and PCBs in cancerous breast tissue than in tissue samples from benign breast tumors.
It's important to note that unlike their natural counterparts, hormone impostors are not broken down and excreted. Instead, these structurally stable scoundrels hang out in the fatty tissues of the animals that consume them. So when you eat an animal-derived food, the hormone impostors get passed along to you--and then establish permanent residence in your fatty tissues.
Individually, hormone-mimicking pesticides are hazardous enough. Now there's evidence that their effects multiply when they occur together.
When John A. McLachlan, a toxicologist at the Center for Bioenvironmental Research at Tulane and Xavier Universities in New Orleans, combined the pesticides endosulfan and dieldrin, the estrogenic activity of endosulfan was 160 times greater, and that of dieldrin was 1,600 times greater. When McLachlan combined endosulfan with chlordane, endosulfan's estrogenic activity increased by 100 times. This finding is even more remarkable when you consider that chlordane by itself has no estrogenic activity whatsoever.
This so-called chemical cocktail syndrome is of more than academic interest. In real life, we are continually being bombarded by an array of combinations of pesticides. Multiple pairings may produce exponentially compounded estrogenic activity.
The EPA and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) share responsibility for protecting the public from pesticides. Though mandated to monitor our food supply for pesticide residues, the FDA samples less than 1 percent of our food. What's more, 60 percent of the pesticides cannot be detected by the FDA's current testing procedures. Newer, non-routine laboratory methods are required to identify about half of the pesticides commonly used today. In effect, fewer than half of the pesticides potentially present in foods are even tested for.
Even so, the FDA has discovered pesticide residues in 48 percent of the most frequently consumed fruits and vegetables. Ninety-nine percent of commercial apples, for example, are treated with pesticides. (Will these apples keep the doctor away, or will they eventually necessitate a visit to one?) More than 95 percent of corn crops are dusted with herbicides.
Remember, since the FDA's testing procedures can't detect more than half of the pesticides potentially present in foods, the true percentages of contamination must be substantially higher. Consider, too, that there is a cumulative effect going on here, since we eat several servings of these foods every day.
In her book Silent Spring, Rachel Carson raised "a question that is not only scientific but moral. The question is whether any civilization can wage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called civilized."
If our war on weeds, bugs, and fungi is slowly destroying us, too, we must ask "Why are we doing this to ourselves?" The answer can be found by surveying the political landscape.
Way back in 1987, the prestigious National Academy of Sciences issued a report estimating that pesticides in our nation's food supply would be responsible for one million cancers in the United States over the course of our lifetimes. Yet since then, the government has steadfastly refused to make protecting Americans from pesticides a national priority.
Meanwhile, we're being treated like human guinea pigs, as most pesticides are being applied to our foods without any testing whatsoever. In fact, many pesticides were approved by the EPA before they had undergone the requisite health and safety analyses. Of the few that have been adequately evaluated, virtually all have shown some degree of toxicity. Still, weak government standards allow these pesticides to remain on the market. The outcome of this diabolical experiment is already visible around us: thousands of cancer cases now, and thousands more to come.
Even the EPA acknowledges that 30 percent of all insecticides and 60 to 90 percent of all other pesticides could cause cancer. Yet of the approximately 400 pesticide products now in use, about 85 percent have not been tested for carcinogenicity.
For one of the most egregious examples of how politics influences public policy on pesticides, you need only look back to the Alar debacle. Alar (also known as diaminozide) is a plant growth regulator that's sprayed on certain fruits and vegetables to give them a deep red color. In the mid-1970s, research revealed that Alar on apples causes cancer. The EPA didn't propose a ban until 1985--and even then, the agency's Science Advisory Panel rejected the proposal. Then two U.S. senators revealed that seven of the eight panel members were serving as consultants to the chemical industry at the same time that they ruled to continue using Alar.
This outrageous behavior underscores a huge, ongoing problem: There is a giant revolving door through which top chemical industry executives get appointed to government regulatory positions, do a stint, and then return to industry. Who speaks for the people who want to stop being poisoned?
Politicians possess the power to stop the carnage. But without a grassroots movement that's determined to institute change, the rich and powerful chemical, agricultural, and food-processing companies will continue to get their way.
More than four billion pounds of pesticides are produced in the United States each year. One-fifth of this amount is exported to Third World countries, where indiscriminate use has had consequences of disastrous proportions. Acute and chronic toxic reactions to pesticides occur with alarming regularity.
According to the World Health Organization, 500,000 acute pesticide poisonings and 5,000 pesticide-related deaths occur worldwide each year. The reasons for this are manifold. For example, pesticide products are often misused. The governments of developing countries seldom have regulations in place to control the application of pesticides. And what good are warning labels to people who can't read?
Another inherent danger of exported pesticides is that we often end up eating them ourselves. In a shocking scandal of global proportions, pesticides such as DDT--which have been banned as too hazardous for use in this country--are being exported on a large scale to Third World countries. There they're applied to crops such as coffee, bananas, and beef, which we then import and consume. This vicious circle has been dubbed the Circle of Poison by journalists David Weir and Mark Schapiro in their book of the same name.
Several years ago, while on a trip to China as a guest of that country's government, I visited a communal farm near Suchow. Our hosts served us an elaborate lunch in the commune's guest hall, whose windows supplied a panoramic view of very flat farmland stretching off as far as the eye could see. As we ate and the various speakers spoke, I gazed out at the fields. Off in the distance, I noticed several workers dipping large wooden ladles into buckets, then spreading a white, lumpy powder onto the crops. Whatever the stuff was, it was not being applied evenly. Some plants got large clumps of it, while others got none.
This piqued my curiosity. I waited for an opportune moment, then asked the speaker (who was now taking questions about the commune) what the people out in the field were up to. The answer came back through an interpreter: "They are applying a pesticide--DDT--to the crops." Adroitly sidestepping any embarrassing follow-up questions, the speaker quickly moved to another topic.
I was first stunned, then outraged. But my sense of decorum prevented me from making a big deal out of the fact that the workers were clearly poisoning themselves. Didn't they know that DDT was extremely toxic and carcinogenic--that it had been banned in my country? (I didn't realize it then, but their DDT had almost certainly come from the United States.)
Feeling a desperate need to discuss this with someone, I cornered our guide after the meeting and asked him why this barbaric procedure hadn't been stopped. He was well aware of the dangers of DDT. But as he explained, the communes had quotas to meet, and the central government imposed penalties for not meeting them. Using DDT boosted production.
I was horrified--and depressed. Clearly, the dangers of DDT were being downplayed by government officials, and the peasants were being kept in the dark about the true risks to their health.
Sound familiar?
The average American consumes approximately 1,500 pounds of food each year. Of this, 10 percent--about 150 pounds--is additives.
The FDA has approved more than 3,000 types of additives for use in our nation's food supply. The vast majority of these compounds have health-eroding and life-shortening properties. This widespread poisoning of the American public constitutes nothing less than a national calamity.
Virtually all of the packaged foods sold in supermarkets contain additives. Some of these foods have so many artificial ingredients--stuff like emulsifiers, preservatives, and stabilizers--that their labels read like chemistry textbooks. They're so corrupted that they don't even look real.
Why do manufacturers insist on putting these literally sickening substances into what may otherwise be wholesome foods? For primarily three reasons: to facilitate processing; to enhance color, texture, and taste; and--perhaps most important--to extend shelf life.
Getting fresh, whole foods to market and stocking them without spoilage costs a bundle. By pumping their products full of preservatives and other additives, food manufacturers and suppliers save billions of dollars a year just on storage and shipping. They can stockpile their products in warehouses and on grocery store shelves for weeks, even months. And they don't have to worry that the foods will decompose.
To be sure, extending a food's shelf life translates into huge financial savings for the food industry. But the consumer pays a high price in terms of health and longevity.
Given the proven long-term toxicity of many food additives, you have to wonder why the FDA continues to sanction their use. In 1959, the FDA released what has come to be known as the GRAS list--GRAS meaning generally recognized as safe. The list exempts certain additives from FDA regulations. One such regulation is the Delaney clause, which prohibits the addition or application of known carcinogens to foods.
According to the FDA, each of the additives on the GRAS list either has a clean record historically or has been proven safe scientifically. Yet at the time of the list's inception, a good number of substances were awarded GRAS status without adequate testing. (They had received government approval prior to 1959 and so were grandfathered onto the list.)
The FDA does reevaluate its GRAS list from time to time, adding and purging substances as more information becomes available. Still, many additives linger on the list long after their toxicity has been proven. Nitrites and saccharin, for example, retain their GRAS status even though ample evidence exists of their cancer-causing properties. Further study will undoubtedly expose even more "safe" additives as poisons.
For its part, the FDA seems to have taken the position that a substance remains innocent until proven guilty--well beyond a reasonable doubt. And so the GRAS list has come to epitomize what former U.S. senator George McGovern once described as "the never-never land of nonregulation."
Of course, food manufacturers themselves have no interest in finding a substance harmful. They may wind up spending a lot of money to phase out the noxious additive and switch to something safe.
Reading labels won't necessarily protect you from "tainted" foods, either. The regulations governing the disclosure of ingredients are loaded with loopholes. For instance, a given additive may be identified on some labels but not on others. Canned vegetables that contain monosodium glutamate (MSG) must say so in the ingredients list. This requirement does not apply to mayonnaise, salad dressings, and a host of other foods. Go figure.
What's more, the ingredients in packaged foods may themselves have additives among their ingredients. The preservative butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT), for example, is often added to vegetable oil to prevent it from turning rancid. The oil may show up in salad dressings, baked goods, and other prepared, processed foods. And you'd never know that they contain BHT, because it won't be mentioned on the labels.
Additive-laced foods have no place in a Renewal-supporting diet. The toxins that these foods contain disrupt the Renewal process, undermining health and longevity at the cellular level.
Research has shown that additives have especially disturbing effects on mental performance, mood, and behavior. Scientists know that the toxins harm healthy brain cells and scramble the messages transmitted between the cells.
When the New York City board of education decided to cut from its school lunch program all foods containing certain food colorings, they made a remarkable discovery. Students' test scores on a national standardized achievement test rose from the dismal 39th percentile (meaning that 61 percent of the nation's public school students had higher scores) to the 47th percentile. Intrigued, the board moved to eliminate all synthetic colorings and flavorings from school lunches. This time, students' test scores shot up to the 51st percentile.
Figuring that they must be on to something, board members agreed that any foods containing BHT or its "sister" preservative butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) should no longer be served in city schools. Once again, students' test scores skyrocketed, this time to the 55th percentile. (Prior to the board's experiment, scores had never changed by more than 1 percent from one year to the next.)
Clearly, food additives had some role in suppressing the students' mental processes. Just imagine how much their test scores might have improved if their parents had instituted a similar additive ban at home.
By sticking with the fresh, organically grown foods of the Anti-Aging Diet, you never have to worry about additives. Only when you eat processed, packaged foods do you expose yourself to these toxins.
Of the additives used by food manufacturers, the following have proven toxic effects within the human body. At the very least, you should steer clear of these substances as much as you can.
Aluminum. Manufacturers use aluminum as an anticaking agent in cake mixes, baking powder, salt, and similar items. (Most antacids and underarm deodorants also contain aluminum.) The additive has been implicated as a causative factor in Alzheimer's disease.
Artificial color. When you see "FD&C" in an ingredients list, you can assume that the food contains some sort of artificial color. (Appropriately enough, the abbreviation stands for food dye and color.) Of these appearance-enhancers, the following have the most devastating health effects.
Aspartame. Sold under brand names such as Equal and NutraSweet, aspartame enjoys the dubious distinction of having spawned more complaints to the FDA than any other single substance. The artificial sweetener contains phenylalanine, which serves as a precursor to the brain chemical norepinephrine. As such, phenylalanine can alter brain chemistry and cause behavioral changes.
In studies conducted before aspartame won FDA approval, the additive caused brain tumors and epileptic seizures in laboratory rats. Humans have reported a wide variety of symptoms after consuming aspartame, including headaches, fatigue, constipation, menstrual irregularities, and depression.
Occasional small doses of aspartame probably won't cause problems for most people. But consuming large quantities of the sweetener on a daily basis, as folks who are trying to lose weight tend to do, can produce symptoms such as those mentioned above. Ironically, research suggests that aspartame and other sugar substitutes make little difference in the "battle of the bulge." Despite the widespread consumption of artificial sweeteners in the United States, the nation's epidemic of obesity continues unabated.
Mothers-to-be should avoid aspartame for the duration of their pregnancies, as the effects of the sweetener on developing fetuses are uncertain. Also, aspartame should not be exposed to heat or used in cooking. High temperatures cause the sweetener to break down into methyl alcohol, which may contribute to blindness and brain damage.
Benzoic acid and sodium benzoate. These preservatives have been used for more than 70 years to inhibit the growth of microorganisms in fruit juices, pickles, and soft drinks. Though widely believed to be benign, both substances displayed carcinogenic properties in Russian studies. What's more, sodium benzoate inhibited neurological development, stunted growth, and shortened life span in laboratory rats. And in a study published in the British medical journal Lancet, benzoic acid produced profound hyperactivity in 79 percent of children who ate it.
BHA and BHT. Oils and other fats turn rancid with age and repeated exposure to air. Both BHA and BHT block this process by scavenging free radicals as they form.
But don't confuse these preservatives with antioxidant nutrients such as vitamins A, C, and E. In animal studies, BHA and BHT have caused liver damage, baldness, fetal abnormalities, and growth retardation. They also seem to affect sleep, appetite, and other behaviors.
Researchers who fed BHA to pregnant rats noted changes in the brain enzymes of the rats' offspring. In particular, the preservative decreased production of cholinesterase, which is responsible for recycling the brain chemical acetylcholine. (In humans, acetylcholine plays a role in concentration and short-term memory.) Other researchers have found that BHT promotes the formation of cancerous tumors in mice.
Persistent questions about the safety of BHA and BHT have convinced Australia and Sweden to ban the additives and the United Kingdom to severely restrict them. In this country, however, both preservatives retain their GRAS status. And because they're usually added to foods that are then used as ingredients in other foods, BHA and BHT seldom show up on labels.
Much to my amazement, some anti-aging "experts" actually
advocate high doses of BHA and BHT because of the preservatives'
antioxidant properties. We have access to plenty of safe, natural
Brominated vegetable oil. Manufacturers use brominated vegetable oil as an anticlouding agent and emulsifier. The additive also shows up in some bottled soft drinks because it prevents the formation of rings where liquid meets air.
As its name suggests, brominated vegetable oil is produced via a process known as bromination. Bromination is quite similar to hydrogenation. One crucial difference: Bromination utilizes the poisonous element bromine rather than the relatively innocuous hydrogen.
Studies have shown that just three ounces of a 2 percent brominated vegetable oil solution could poison children. In adults, the additive reduces immune defenses and depletes histamine, thus encouraging allergic reactions. Yet for reasons that must be clearer to the FDA than to me, manufacturers are not required to list brominated vegetable oil on food labels.
Calcium propionate and sodium propionate. Both of these additives appear to be relatively nontoxic. Still, they can cause migraines and other allergic reactions in people who are sensitive to them.
Carrageenan. Derived from seaweed, carrageenan (also known as Irish moss) serves as a stabilizer and thickening agent. It is often added to low-calorie foods to give them bulk (so they're more filling) and to mask the aftertaste of artificial sweeteners. It thickens and improves the mouth-feel of gravies, ketchup, mustard, pie fillings, puddings, relishes, salad dressings, sauces, soft drinks, and soups. It keeps the chocolate from settling in chocolate milk and other beverages. It minimizes surface hardening and improves the spreadability of cream cheese, processed cheeses, and soft cheeses.
Carrageenan is also used to enhance the texture of a variety of commercial baked goods, including breads, cakes, and doughnuts. And it's a common ingredient in candy, marshmallows, and jellies, because it prevents sugar from crystalizing.
Despite its extensive résumé in the food preparation business, carrageenan seldom gets mentioned on food labels. Better that it would. In laboratory animals, the additive produced pinhead-size lesions in the large intestine, along with bloody, mucus-filled stools. Both symptoms are typical of a human condition known as ulcerative colitis. Other animals developed tumors, ulcers, and cirrhosis-like lesions on their livers.
Ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid
(EDTA). In nutrition circles, EDTA has
something of a Jekyll-and-Hyde reputation. A binding agent, it latches
onto heavy metal ions such as cadmium, cobalt, and lead and disarms these
potential toxins. But in the process, it robs foods of essential minerals
such as
Fluoride. The
consumption of fluoridated water plays a role in more than 10,000 cancer
deaths in the United States per year. Fluoride is a known carcinogen. It
also weakens the immune system, contributes to birth defects, and robs the
body of
In the United States, many communities fluoridate water as a means of preventing cavities. In Europe, however, 10 countries now prohibit any use of fluoride. My advice: If your community's water supply contains fluoride, drink purified water--either bottled or run through your own purifier--instead.
Gum arabic and gum tragacanth. Both additives can cause allergic reactions in people who are sensitive to them.
Heptylparaben. Heptylparaben inhibits the formation of mold in jams and frozen desserts. Research has linked the additive to birth defects.
Hydrolyzed vegetable protein. "Vegetable protein" may sound benign enough. In fact, this additive stunts children's growth. It also contains MSG, which I'll discuss in just a bit.
Modified food starch. In and of itself, food starch isn't so bad. It's the modification that causes problems. The process may involve the use of chemicals such as aluminum sulfate, propylene oxide, and 1-octyl succinic anhydride, toxins that linger in the additive and so get passed along into foods.
Monoglycerides and diglycerides.
These additives block the absorption of
MSG. About 50 million pounds of MSG infiltrate our nation's food supply each year. Without question, the flavor enhancer is the most ubiquitous of all food additives.
Most people associate MSG with Chinese cuisine. But you'll also find the additive in the majority of packaged foods, including frozen dinners, frozen and canned vegetables, processed seafood, processed lunchmeats, most soups and soup mixes, salad dressings, condiments and seasonings, baked goods, and candy. Even commercially prepared baby foods used to contain MSG, until public outcry forced the manufacturers to discontinue the practice.
In people who are sensitive to it, MSG causes the symptoms of what has been dubbed Chinese restaurant syndrome: headache, a burning sensation in the back of the neck and forearms, tightness in the chest, heart palpitations, sweating, weakness, and numbness. The FDA has recommended further investigation of the additive's potential adverse effects on the human reproductive system and its role in human cell mutation.
In the meantime, MSG retains its GRAS status. And as with so many other additives, MSG isn't always listed on food labels. To limit your exposure to the stuff, prepare your own meals--using only fresh ingredients--as often as possible.
When you do dine out, be especially careful with your meal selection in Chinese and other Asian establishments. The servers don't always know whether MSG is added to particular dishes. You may need to ask the chef or even the owner. Don't feel uncomfortable about doing so. After all, your health is at stake.
My wife, Dellie, and I had a horrific experience at a local Thai restaurant. Dellie was four months pregnant at the time, and we were having dinner with another couple. When the waiter came to our table, we realized that he spoke minimal English. All I said was "no MSG." The waiter gave some vague response, so I repeated "no MSG." At that point, the waiter called over the head waiter. Again I repeated my request, to which the head waiter replied, "No problem."
About a half-hour after we left the restaurant, all four of us began to experience symptoms of Chinese restaurant syndrome. Needless to say, we were infuriated--and Dellie and I were afraid that our unborn child might be harmed. We later confronted the restaurant's owner, who acknowledged that our food had been tainted with MSG.
Nitrates and nitrites. Both preservatives are routinely added to processed meat products such as bacon, corned beef, ham, hot dogs, lunchmeats, and sausage. They prevent the growth of bacteria and, as a "bonus," give the meat a deceptively healthful-looking pink hue.
But once they reach the stomach, these compounds transform into cancer-causing agents called nitrosamines. So to help avoid cancer, forgo all foods containing these preservatives.
Phosphoric acid. Colas have no nutritional value whatsoever. What they do have is phosphoric acid, a flavoring and acidifying agent that causes serious health problems.
Once in the body, phosphoric acid binds with and removes
What's more, phosphoric acid dissolves the aluminum inside soda cans. The aluminum then gets mixed in with the soda and ingested. As I mentioned earlier, scientific evidence implicates aluminum as a contributing factor in the development of Alzheimer's disease.
Other foods--including baked goods, cereals, cheeses, and evaporated milk--contain phosphates, which are forms of phosphoric acid. Excessive consumption of phosphates blocks calcium absorption and flushes the mineral out of bones, laying the groundwork for the brittle-bone disease osteoporosis.
Propyl gallate. An antioxidant like BHA and BHT, propyl gallate retards the spoilage of oils and other fats. It's a common ingredient in chewing gum, chicken soup stock, and meat products. At least one long-term study has suggested that propyl gallate has cancer-causing properties.
Saccharin. In 1977, the FDA considered prohibiting the use of saccharin, because numerous animal studies had shown the artificial sweetener to be a potent carcinogen. But when subsequent studies failed to establish a relationship between saccharin and human cancers, the proposed ban fell through.
To this day, many nutrition-minded experts question saccharin's safety. The sugar substitute remains a common ingredient in processed foods, particularly low-calorie "diet" foods.
Salt. Small amounts of salt (or sodium chloride, as some labels say) seldom cause problems. On the other hand, a high intake of the stuff--as supplied by a steady diet of processed foods--may cause high blood pressure. And high blood pressure paves the way for heart attack and stroke.
If you like the taste of salt, try adding a dash of sea salt or soy sauce to your meal. By all means steer clear of highly salted processed foods.
Sugar. Sugar--an umbrella term that encompasses refined white sugar as well as brown sugar, corn syrup, fructose, honey, molasses, and most other sweetners--literally saturates the standard American diet. The average American consumes 130 pounds of sugar annually, or more than 1/3 pound per day. As a nation, we eat our collective weight in sugar every year.
By itself, sugar completely lacks nutritional value. And because it takes the place of nutrients in the diet, it contributes to deficiencies. Worse yet, excess amounts of sugar in the body are converted into saturated fat for storage.
For all of these reasons (as well as a few others), a high sugar intake is considered a key player in heart disease, cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis, obesity, and numerous other life-shortening conditions. (You'll learn more about the health implications of sugar in chapter 17.)
Sulfites. On packaged foods, sulfites may go by names such as potassium bisulfite, potassium metabisulfite, sodium bisulfite, sodium metabisulfite, and sulfur dioxide. They're used as preservatives in grape juice, vinegars, and wines. In restaurants, they may be applied to the sliced fruits and vegetables in salads and at salad bars to prevent discoloration.
Sulfites have caused fatal allergic reactions, including
anaphylactic shock and asthma attacks, in people who are sensitive to
them. Though not cancer-causing themselves, they encourage viruses,
bacteria, and fungi to mutate into carcinogens. Sulfites also destroy
In fairness to the FDA, some of the food additives on its GRAS list are safe. A relative handful are even good for you. These substances, by virtue of their molecular structures, work with human biochemistry rather than against it. In doing so, they foster good health rather than destroying it.
For example, some processed foods contain extra doses of the
antioxidant nutrients beta-carotene,
The idea that additives are okay can be misleading, however.
Take bread as an example. Most of the loaves that you see in your
supermarket have been made with enriched flour, a refined flour that has
been stripped clean of fiber, protein, vitamins, and minerals. Enrichment
with
When you see vitamins listed in a bread's ingredients list, they're your clue that the bread lacks authentic wholesomeness. Put the loaf back and look for a whole-grain variety instead.
Of course, you can generally avoid such supermarket minefields by choosing only foods labeled "organic" (or "biodynamic"). This shopping rule of thumb applies to processed products as well as fresh fare.
Most people think of organic foods as those grown without the aid of synthetic pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, or other potentially toxic chemicals. But organic, at least as it applies to processed foods, also means that the foods contain no additives or other artificial ingredients.
Going organic greatly reduces your exposure to food-borne toxins of all kinds. A growing number of people are making the switch. Americans spend an estimated $1.5 billion per year on organic produce alone. And in a Louis Harris poll, 84 percent of Americans said that they would prefer to buy organic foods over chemically altered varieties.
To be sure, going organic can make a world of difference in terms of your health and longevity. At the same time, it shouldn't turn your world upside down. Here are a few pointers to help ease the transition--and to support the organic movement.
Tell your supermarket to stock up. As the organic movement has gained momentum, organic foods have become more widely available. Several major supermarket chains have added organic sections. If your grocery store has yet to pick up on the trend, drop a note in the store's suggestion box or--even better--speak with the manager. (And if your store already stocks organic foods, nudge the manager to offer even more.)
Remember, supermarkets vie with each other for your business. They understand that customers can quickly change loyalties. And they pass along the word to their wholesalers, growers, and other suppliers that customers want better selections of organic foods.
If you're concerned about the costs of organic foods, you'll be pleased to know that they're much less expensive than they used to be. Improved growing and processing techniques, combined with greater competition among growers and manufacturers, have driven down prices. And they should continue to drop over time. Cheaper organic produce can also be found at your local farmers market.
Read labels. As I mentioned earlier, federal regulations don't require full disclosure on product labels. So you can never be sure that a packaged food is 100 percent additive-free. Still, you can learn a lot about the food's desirability--or lack thereof--just by perusing the ingredients list.
Even if the label says "organic" or "biodynamic," read the ingredients list anyway. Some foods identified as organic may actually contain artificial ingredients. According to the Organic Foods Production Act, a processed food must meet two criteria in order to wear the organic label: At least 50 percent of the food's ingredients must be organically grown or organically produced, and at least 95 percent of the food itself must be organically produced. So by definition, an organic food may still contain additives and other undesirable chemicals, even if in trace amounts.
Think twice about natural foods. Since the federal government established official guidelines for the use of "organic" on labels, some manufacturers have resorted to identifying their foods as "natural." They want to create an image of healthfulness that consumers equate with organic. Be forewarned: Natural doesn't necessarily mean nutritious or pesticide- and additive-free.
"Natural" breads, for instance, may be made with white flour, sugar, hydrogenated oils, and preservatives. "Natural" cereals may contain more sugar than processed varieties. "Natural" ice cream may be loaded with artificial colors, vegetable gums, monoglycerides, and diglycerides. "Natural" beef may contain pesticides, antibiotics, and hormones.
In addition, beware of produce that flaunts that look of perfection. Flawless fruits and vegetables usually mean that pesticides were used solely for the purpose of enhancing appearance. More than 50 percent of the pesticides used on tomatoes and more than 70 percent of the pesticides used on citrus fruits are applied purely for cosmetic purposes.
Be wary of waxing. When browsing the produce aisle, you may have noticed that certain fruits and vegetables look much shinier than others. The sheen comes from waxes such as palm oil derivatives, paraffins, shellacs, and synthetic resins, the same ingredients in the products that you use to polish your car and your furniture.
Like other additives, waxes enhance the visual appeal of produce. They seal in moisture, which keeps a fruit or vegetable looking fresh and prolongs its shelf life. Unfortunately, they also lock in any pesticides that have been sprayed on the food. (Some waxes contain fungicides, too.)
No matter how hard you scrub, you cannot remove the wax coating from produce. Inside your body, the wax coats your intestinal tract, effectively blocking nutrient absorption. Peeling a fruit or vegetable before eating it helps, but you're still getting unhealthy doses of those sealed-in pesticides and other toxins.
You can usually spot the wax coating on certain produce, such as apples, cucumber, and green and sweet red and yellow peppers. Other fruits and vegetables to be wary of include avocado, cantaloupe, eggplant, grapefruit, lemons, limes, melons, oranges, parsnips, passion fruit, peaches, pumpkins, rutabaga, squash, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, and turnips. (Of course, if you buy only organic produce, you never have to worry about waxing.)
Plant an organic garden. If organic produce is hard to come by in your area, you can always try your hand at growing your own. All it takes is a small plot of ground and a little bit of time. Lettuce, tomatoes, and zucchini make good starter crops--they are quite hardy and usually thrive with minimal maintenance.
If you suspect that the soil in your garden has been contaminated by pesticides, scrape away the top 12 inches and replace it with organic soil, compost, and fertilizer. A local nursery can provide all the necessary supplies and answer any questions you may have.
Petition government officials. Contact your congressman to voice your concerns about the state of our nation's food supply. Encourage them to introduce and pass legislation that imposes tougher standards for the use of pesticides, additives, and other toxins in foods. Ask them to support the research and development of new food production technologies that could eliminate the need for toxins altogether. Tell them that you oppose the notion of "acceptable risk"--that you feel no amount of a noxious substance is "safe."
Join consumer and environmental groups. Without grassroots political action, the general public doesn't stand a fighting chance against the industries responsible for poisoning our foods and our planet. A number of consumer and environmental groups have taken the fight for safe foods all the way to Capitol Hill. They include the following:
You can show your support for any or all of these organizations simply by becoming a member. (Note: Some of these groups may charge annual membership fees.)
Switching to organic foods may require some time and effort up front. But these small investments promise huge payoffs. You'll feel better, you'll stay healthier, and you'll earn extra "quality time" on this planet.
And when you spend your dollars on organic foods, you send the message that you want a clean, safe food supply. In this way, you nurture the development of new growing and processing techniques that protect rather than poison foods of all kinds.
Nature gives you only one body. How you take care of it determines how long it will last. Feed your body only organic, toxin-free foods, and it has the best chance of staying youthful and disease-free for a lifetime.
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Food-borne toxins play a prominent role in the development of cancer. But they're not the only causative factors. In the next chapter, we'll examine just how this insidious disease begins its slow and silent destruction of the human body--and what we can do to stop it.