DailyDirt: Potato, Po-tah-to... Azodicarbonamide

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Fri, Oct 9th 2015 5:00pm — Michael Ho

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.

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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Filed Under: chemophobia, eggs, food, food additives, food labels, food science, ingredients, mayo
Companies: fda

13 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 9 Oct 2015 @ 5:10pm

My bowel movements are all natural, and organic too.
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- Thrudd, 9 Oct 2015 @ 5:21pm
  
  Response to: Anonymous Coward on Oct 9th, 2015 @ 5:10pm
  Only if you started with all natural ingredients and even then there had better not be anything like softeners or accelerants either.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 10 Oct 2015 @ 2:35am
    
    Re: Natural organic softeners and accelarants
    You mean like prunes?
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Alareth (profile), 10 Oct 2015 @ 9:01am

I'm going to open a restraunt where all the food is made from 100% chemicals.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Oct 2015 @ 12:07pm

"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."

I don't think you make the point you set out to there. Chemicals aren't bad for you they're just carcinogenic.

And say what you will about the Egg eggs, but mayonnaise is a traditional recipe with a long history and it can't be made without egg yolk (+ an acid, either vinegar or lemon juice and oil).
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- Anonymous Coward, 11 Oct 2015 @ 4:01am
  
  Re:
  I would like to add that the USDA has this nasty habit of qualifying foods by ingredients and appearance of those ingredients. It is one of those nasty roadblocks to marketeers who wish to fool consumers into buying their lower quality cheaply made products. I see nothing wrong with the words substitute or imitation that the 'health' food industry tries to avoid at all costs.
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- nasch (profile), 12 Oct 2015 @ 4:55pm
  
  Re:
  Chemicals aren't bad for you they're just carcinogenic.
  
  Carcinogenic isn't bad for you? And all chemicals (assuming you mean in the colloquial way and not the scientific) are carcinogenic?
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  - Anonymous Coward, 12 Oct 2015 @ 5:08pm
    
    Re: Re:
    In this case benzene, specifically, is a carcinogen.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Oct 2015 @ 3:52pm

Dihydrogen monoxide is a deadly killer.

It kills so many people in so many ways that it should be banned forever.
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- Digitari, 10 Oct 2015 @ 6:10pm
  
  Re:
  You are correct, all that hydrogen and oxygen could be an explosive mixture, it is Best to ban it....
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- Anonymous Coward, 11 Oct 2015 @ 4:13am
  
  Re:
  A woman died one hour after drinking some at 'Hold Your Pee' contest at a Sacramento radio station in 2007. From my understanding, it was the natural, organic variety.
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  - nasch (profile), 12 Oct 2015 @ 5:14pm
    
    Re: Re:
    No, that was definitely inorganic.
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John Fenderson (profile), 14 Oct 2015 @ 7:28am

Chemicals in natural food
They're making the wrong argument. It's not that there are chemicals in all food (even natural food), it's that every physical object (including all food) is entirely made of chemicals.
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