Do You Know What You’re Eating?

Just when you thought it was safe to go into the milk bar, John Ashton and Ron Laura give a warning.

You go into the milk bar, your mouth watering for a hot, straight-out-of-the-oven meat pie. But even dedicated carnivores might not be so keen if they knew what the pie actually contained. For example (the fact that some contain virtually no real meat aside), in order to accelerate the growth of animals raised for food—mostly beef and chicken—steroids and other hormones are added in abundance.

This is done to reduce the ratio of fat contained in the meat—a clever move for producers. This boost in farm production is supposed to healthfully enhance the food.

Or does it? For consumers, the meat will probably contain traces of damaging chemical hormones, which, when ingested, adversely affect the endocrine system.

Research from the USA reveals that the breast milk of some mothers contains traces of BST, a synthetic hormone used to boost milk production in cows! Although its exact effect on an infant isn’t determined, the evidence showed a high likelihood of serious reper- cussions longer term.

In a letter to the New Scientist , Dr Samuel Epstein, of the University of Illinois, warned that the human breast is particularly susceptible to hormonal influences.

He suggests that BST may increase the breast-cell intake of biochemical factors, for example, which is not only a potential breast-cancer risk but may also increase the sensitivity of the breast to previously unrelated cancer-risk factors.

Researchers express similar concerns about the overuse of antibiotics in farm animals raised for human consumption.

The suggestion is that we’re becoming both immune and allergic to them, with the risk of developing a hypersensitivity reaction.

allergic reactions

One of the most conspicuous side effects of chemical contamination in food is the increasing incidence of allergies.

Numerous studies and reports have documented the allergic responses to hundreds of modern chemicals that we create for ourselves, but we’ve become complacent.

In defining the term allergy, many see it as a disorder resulting from the body reacting adversely to substances normally considered harmless. Allergies fall into two general categories—those evoking medically recognisable responses from the body’s immune system and those described as “sensitivities” to particular foods or chemical compounds. What this definition fails to appreciate is that these so-called sensitivities may be caused by the accumulation of toxic substances.

As pesticide residues accumulate in our bodies we may find we suddenly develop an allergy to apples, for example, where previously there was no ill effect. By extending this hypothesis we can better understand that the allergies exhibited in young children or babies may reflect a state of “toxic overload” in the mother.

A toxic overload of chemical substances such as heavy metals, as found in fish and especially shellfish, for example, might result in an allergic reaction to shellfish. This is because we have slowly accumulated residues of the harmful chemicals permeating our environment; our bodies now tend to react in pathological ways to substances we’ve previously been able to tolerate.

chemical synergies

Sometimes the ingestion of a chemical substance—usually harmless on its own— causes toxicity when combined with another standard chemical substance or substances. For example, the common beverage additive citric acid (which occurs natually in oranges and lemons) increases the rate at which aluminium is absorbed by the body. Water often contains aluminium salts (allums) for clarity, so reconstituted orange juice, or water drunk in combination with added citricacid products, could create a potentially hazardous cocktail.

But worse, evidence suggests dietary aluminium accumulates in the brain, causing brain disorders and diseases of senility, such as Alzheimer’s. Given that citric acid in its synthesised form is added to almost every commercial fruit juice, even relatively low levels of aluminium uptake may become threatening, due to the unanticipated increases in its absorption by the body.

It’s one thing to understand the properties of any single chemical, including its side effects upon health, but quite another to understand the synergetic properties of two or more in combination.

so-so sweeteners

Most people are aware of the carcinogenic effects of some artificial sweeteners, but there are other less-well-known health risks.

We use glucose and its related products as sweeteners in a growing number of processed foods—it’s commercially attractive. When glucose is in its natural form (fruit), it always occurs together with fructose. This is because fructose moderates the adverse affects of glucose on the body. Most glucose used in the preparation of processed foods comes from corn syrups, but by isolating the glucose we unwittingly increase not only the risk of allergies but possibly diabetes also.

The health concern associated with the artificial sweetener aspartame is equally disconcerting.

This low-kilojoule sugar substitute metabolises in the body to form the highly toxic substance called methanol.

Methanol, even when ingested in small amounts, has been shown to cause damage to both the heart and brain, and may also cause death if the dose is high.

If this is the case, why, then, is it still used as the principal sugar substitute in low-kilojoule soft drinks? Because of false assumptions by the food industry.

The reasoning goes like this: The levels of toxic methanol released into the body are judged to be similar or slightly less than the levels of methanol that occur in wine, so health officials assume that the methanol produced through the metabolisation of aspartame would be no more hazardous. This is a flawed assumption.

Wine contains methanol; it also contains relatively large amounts of ethanol (common alcohol), which in nature serves to protect against methanol toxicity.

If we paid more attention to nature, we might see that while methanol may occur naturally in small amounts in some foods such as fruits, wherever it does occur, ethanol is present in excess, inhibiting the toxic effects of the methanol.

So when we consume soft drinks, we and our children are exposed to small amounts of brain-damaging methanol without the detoxifying effects of ethanol.

a chemical soup

Because chemicals are used to process foods, they interact in a variety of ways with the chemicals found naturally in the food being processed. Some of these interactions produce new chemical combinations, which cause specific health problems.

An illustration of these subtle processes is the manufacturing of margarine. This process involves treating vegetable oils with hydrogen gas in the presence of a catalyst. As a result, new chemical compounds called trans-fatty acids (TFA) occur in the margarine.

TFAs have been reported to adversely affect the ratio of “good” and “bad” cholesterols in the body, as well as disrupting the delicate balance governing the body’s production of the important hormone prostaglandin. Such imbalances are associated with such health problems as psoriasis, eczema and rheumatoid arthritis.

While small amounts of TFAs occur naturally in a few foods, such as dairy products, their molecular structure is significantly different from the structure of the TFAs produced during margarine manufacture.

It’s clear, then, that some of our tampering with the chemical structures of natural foods, however sophisticated, is naive. Nature prepares us a rich harvest for our use, and the human body is well adapted to its specific chemical components and combinations.

When we neglect this subtlety, we force our bodies to work against rather than with nature. In doing so, we alienate ourselves from the source of good health and increase our risk of illness and disease. § An expanded treatment on this and other health and environment topics is contained in Perils of Progress ( University of NSW Press), by Dr John Ashton and Dr Ron Laura, and is available in quality bookshops.

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