DailyDirt: Potato, Po-tah-to... Azodicarbonamide
The words "all natural" might not mean what you think it means when it's on a food label. Likewise, just because an ingredient list contains the name of a chemical you've never heard of -- doesn't necessarily mean that "chemical" is bad for you. Potassium benzoate is a common preservative, but it's no longer found in many beverages because it can react with ascorbic acid to create trace amounts of benzene. Food additives may react with other ingredients in some undesirable ways, but should we get rid of all of them? It's nice to be able to increase the shelf life of a Twinkie -- though maybe we should just eat fewer Twinkies to begin with.
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- Ingredients is a book describing 75 common food additives, their uses and history. These 75 chemicals were chosen based on a neutral, negative or positive categorization -- to ensure the book covered the field evenly and didn't just focus on the "bad" ones, but the book doesn't try to encourage chemophobia (though it might not discourage it, either). [note: if you buy the book using that Amazon link, Techdirt may get some compensation.] [url]
- What could be a more natural ingredient than an egg? The egg industry doesn't want anyone else to be able to name mayo or mayonnaise substitutes anything close to "mayo" -- sorry, vegan mayo product companies. [url]
- A bunch of food scientists are trying to make chemicals sound less scary -- by reminding everyone that chemicals are everywhere, even in "natural" foods. Perhaps consumers should be more skeptical or educated about the ingredients in their food, but no one should be afraid of a chemical name simply because they can't pronounce it. [url]
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