Saturday, September 18, 2010

Day 23

Today there is definitely a feeling of fall in the air and we thought chili sounded like the perfect meal for lunch! I went to buy beans, expecting the ingredient to be --  beans – or even beans, water and salt.  I didn’t think there would be any question about the contents of a can of beans!!  Well, once again, my eyes are opened to the content of our food. I did find some that had less than 5 ingredients but also questioned some of the ingredient names. Yes, I could pronounce them, but they just “sounded” like chemicals.  One ingredient that caught my attention was calcium chloride.  It just didn’t set right in my mind so I researched it when I got back from the store. The FDA calls this a substance “generally regarded as safe” (GRAS). They also report that the average person ingests between 160 to 345 mg of the substance per day as an additive in food and this amount “shouldn’t” have a negative health affect. Another ingredient was calcium disodium, which was in many of them. I found that this is “ a preservative for color retention” AND “ used medically to detoxify poisoning by lead and other heavy metals. It may cause intestinal upsets, muscle cramps, kidney damage, and blood in urine. It’s on the FDA priority list of food additives to be studied for mutagenic reproductive effects.”  Wow! All I can say is – wow.
I just don’t have much trust in our FDA system when it comes to protecting the public from chemicals in our food. Sadly, I think they are much more concerned with politics and money than the health of the American public.

1 comment:

  1. Well we had chili as well so I guess calcium disodium was on our menu as well!

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