With cancer and heart-attack rates steadily increasing and obesity on the rise in America, consumers are starting to focus on the foods they are putting into their bodies. Many have started purchasing items like Nutra-Grain Bars, microwave popcorn, reduced fat pastries, and margarine in order to provide healthy-alternatives for their families. But are these “healthy” foods really beneficial? Although these products are fortified with vitamins and are lower in calories than most boxed snacks, they all contain preservatives. New research is indicating that these additives are not only unhealthy, but could also be worse for consumers than just saturated fats or home cooked desserts. In fact, the health risks and damaging effects that these chemical additions are known to cause should turn just about anyone away from eating them, ever.
The chemicals found most often in American foods include hydrogenated oils, butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) and butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA), nitrates, sulfites, and sodium benzoate. All of these chemicals are toxic at substantial amounts but are relatively easy to obtain. In truth, Americans are exposed to them everyday. Although preservatives are very functional in the food-manufacturing world, they are responsible for thousands of preventable deaths every year. So why do companies continue to use these ingredients when creating their products?
The answer is simple: longer shelf life. Preservatives serve as either antimicrobials (preventing bacterial growth) or antioxidants (preventing foods from going rancid). Take hydrogenated oils for example. According to Judy Siegel-Itzkovich, journalist for the Jerusalem Post, “Unsaturated fats, such as those derived from olives, avocados, corn, and canola (rapeseed) are healthful, but when exposed to the air, after a while they can go rancid by absorbing oxygen and then decompose” (7). To prevent this from happening in their products, companies use preservatives that do not decompose in the presence of oxygen. Their products can remain, untouched, on shelves for years and will still taste the same when taken home for consumption. These oils and additives, which are much more affordable than healthy vegetable oils, prevent wasted foods and rushed shipping. The FDA seems to agree that the benefits of using preservatives outweigh the potential risk that they pose for consumers. After all, no one is forcing people to eat foods laden with chemicals.
In fact, many lines of organic and preservative-free foods have recently hit the market. o It is now possible to buy the equivalent of almost any food without added chemicals. Unfortunately, though these foods have fewer ingredients, they often are not name brand, are not low calorie, and carry a higher price tag. Also, repeatedly reading ingredients lists turns simple grocery shopping into a time consuming hunt. People know about the dangers of the chemicals, but they do not have the time or concern to change their actions. According to the Hartman Group, a Chicago consultancy, “although a majority of consumers have heard about trans fats,” only “14% are likely tactively avoid them” as cited in Unmesh (54). After all, most of the damaging effects are not even fully expressed until it is too late to reverse them. Americans continue to consume preservatives despite known health risks.
People have learned to trust the FDA and the products that they eat and have eaten since they were small children. As a result, they are steadily digging their graves with knives and forks. The fact of the matter is that “off-the-shelf” products are nutritionally void. The process of refining and preserving foods destroys thermoliable substances. There are calories to digest, but no nutrients to aid in digesting them. What is even more incredible is the fact that so many nutrients are removed from the refined foods that the Federal government requires that some of the nutrients be added back. After all, the diets of many Americans are comprised solely of processed foods. These “fortified” and “enriched” foods are often thought of to be healthful because they have “added” nutrients. Preservatives are steadily supplementing the healthy façade that is so prevalent in our grocery stores.
Unfortunately, lack of nutrition is not the only problem with using preservatives in food. In all actuality, these handy tools are among our nation's greatest health risks. They have been linked to cancers, high cholesterol, preeclampsia, ulcerative colitis, and most strongly to heart disease. “Yet according to Julie Miller Jones, a professor of foods and nutrition at the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, Minn., and author of Food Safety (Eagan Press, $89), average Americans eat their weight in food additives every year” (Murphy, 2005). The amount of damaging effects are astronomical.
Dr. Kathleen Koehler, an epidemiologist at the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition in Washington, calculates that just removing trans fats from all margarine would prevent approximately 6,300 heart attacks and 2,100 deaths in the US each year; additionally, removing trans fats from just 3 percent of breads and cakes and 15% of cookies and crackers would prevent an estimated 17,100 heart attacks, including 5,600 deaths (qtd. in Siegel-Itzkovich 7).
