THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, September 7, 1995 TAG: 9509060035
SECTION: FLAVOR PAGE: F1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: FITNESS QUEST
SOURCE: BY MATTHEW BOWERS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 209 lines
``EAT YOUR cereal,'' he tells his daughter. ``Drink your juice.''
As they breakfast, they amuse themselves by reading aloud the list of ingredients printed on the side of the bright-yellow box.
Whole-oat flour. Sugar. Salt. Modified food starch? His voice rises in mock horror. Trisodium phosphate? Calcium carbonate? The daughter laughs.
Soon, the father isn't laughing. Phosphates? Carbonates?
He checks the juice container: water, grape-juice concentrate, grape juice, ascorbic acid?
He looks at the milk label: low-fat milk, vitamin A palmitate, vitamin D3.
Never mind reading the toaster-pastries box. Just thinking about it gives him the willies.
The father quickly realizes food additives are all but unavoidable, a fact of modern-day-American, pull-up-a-chair, stuff-our-face life.
From cereal and juice in the morning, to fast-food fries and cola at noon, to salad and bread and plain old tap water at night, foodstuffs contain an array of natural and laboratory-created chemicals.
They're intended to keep your bread from getting moldy.
To put the buttery taste and color into your margarine.
To add extra vitamins and minerals to your cereal, or replace the ones lost through processing.
And, not incidentally, to save manufacturers money - fake vanillin from a test tube is cheaper and longer-lasting than real vanilla from beans, and is always available, no matter how the crops fare.
The U. S. Food and Drug Administration says that since the 1958 Food Additives and the 1960 Color Additives amendments to the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, all chemicals used in food must be deemed safe to ``a reasonable certainty.'' This doesn't, however, mean beyond all doubt.
An addendum, the Delaney clause, specifically forbids approving any food additive that causes cancer in people or animals. A major exception came in 1978, when Congress overruled the FDA's year-old ban on saccharin, which tests showed caused cancer in some rats; the FDA instead ordered a warning label on foods containing the artificial sweetener.
Saccharin aside, ``if it doesn't kill a rat or give it cancer, you can use it in food,'' sums up Manfred Kroger, a Pennsylvania State University food-science professor who specializes in additives.
He says some 3,000 are recognized. Between 1,200 and 1,400 of them are flavors; as many as 30 are colors.
Most people probably don't give a thought to which of these are in the cola or cookies they wolf down. But consumer groups and food-conscious individuals do, and they raise concerns. They say additives that are safe for some aren't necessarily safe for all - and some might not be safe for anyone.
Kroger maintains that most additives are not only safe but beneficial. But he agrees when critics of additives say that people should know more about what they eat.
``Food is an intimate thing,'' he says. ``We need to raise food literacy in our country. That means we have to know what's in it . . . .''
Thimblefuls of stuff
The definition of an ``additive'' can depend on who's doing the defining.
Some food experts like Kroger say it can be as basic as the salt you shake on your steak. But most are likely to mean the stuff added to the salt: iodine, which prevents goiter, a dysfunction of the thyroid gland, and ``processing aids'' such as magnesium silicate, which keeps it from caking.
``It's a normal ingredient that in a lifetime you eat a pittance . . . a thimbleful,'' Kroger says of the anti-caking additive. ``It has no more effect diluted over time than licking the dust off your finger.''
Some additives are natural, from seaweed or soybeans, such as the soy-derivative lecithin, which serves as an emulsifier to help keep oil and water properly mixed in margarine, ice cream and baked goods. Some are strictly laboratory creations, like many of the artificial colors, which are petroleum-based.
Some sound scary. Yellow prussiate of soda, an anti-caking additive, contains cyanide, but in non-toxic form. Some people have tried to commit suicide by swallowing it, according to Michael F. Jacobson in his ``Complete Eater's Digest and Nutritional Scoreboard,'' ``but the attempts were dismal failures.''
Some sound weird. Carnauba wax - yes, the same stuff used to polish cars - is found in sugar-free gums and hard candies to add shine and texture.
Vitamins routinely are added to cereals and milk. Acids go in some foods to preserve colors. Starches help thicken. The government mandates that iron be added to white flour, to replace some of the nutrients lost when whole-grain flour is processed into white.
Some additives find their way into food indirectly. Paper and cardboard packaging and plastic wrap can diffuse slightly onto food, and so must be tested for eating safety. Hot tap water in large places like high-rise buildings and ships includes substances added to protect against corrosion, and which can end up in your tea.
Kroger says the National Science Foundation and the FDA define additives broadly: ``Anything that can become part of food as a result of its production, manufacture, processing, storage, treatment, you name it, washing, whatever.''
Safe or not?
But how safe are all these added substances in our food?
Officially, they're safe enough for the entire population to eat, according to the FDA, which approves them. Penn State's Kroger is among many food experts who agree.
``Preservatives should be looked at as beneficial, because foods are preserved for consumption,'' the professor says.
For instance, scientists discovered that cranberries didn't mold because they were naturally protected by sodium benzoate, so they started producing the chemical compound in their labs to use in other foods. ``In other words,'' Kroger says, ``we're imitating the good chemistry of Mother Nature. And that is technology.''
Barbara M. Chrisley, chairwoman of the Health Services Department at Radford University, says people should be aware of additives, but not afraid.
``Generally, I think our foods are safer,'' she says. ``The body does not recognize whether it just comes from an organic patch or it has been processed.''
Leslie J. Bonci, a dietitian at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, fields many calls about additives. She puts most of them in the food-safety category - they protect against spoilage and contamination - but warns people to be careful, as with any foodstuffs.
Some people might be sensitive or allergic - to the point of fatal shock - to the preservatives sulfites, or the flavor-enhancer monosodium glutamate, or MSG. Check the label.
If salt is a problem, look for any compound that includes ``sodium.'' If you're avoiding fat, also watch out for compounds ending in ``ide,'' although the amounts involved are minute.
Even the popular artificial sweetener Nutrasweet contains lactose, a milk sugar, which could affect people who are lactose-intolerant.
While food might contain only tiny amounts of additives, overindulgence - as with any food - can lead to problems, particularly in children whose body mass is relatively small, Bonci says.
Kroger agrees. ``We should not worry about eating too much of a food additive unless we bring in the concept of eating too much alcohol, eating too much sugar, eating too much fat, eating too much pickled herring, or mustard,'' and you won't get too much of an additive unless you're overeating, period, he says.
``Food is supposed to spoil''
Others, though, say many food additives are things everyone should avoid.
The government has banned some in the past 25 years, the most famous probably being the artificial sweetener cyclamate and the dyes Red Nos. 2 and 4.
Jacobson, director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington, writes in his ``Complete Eater's Digest'' that all artificial colors should be avoided, since several already have been banned because of cancer concerns. Their use has grown greatly with the increase in processed foods, where artificial colors often provide the only color.
He also warns against the common preservative BHT, or butylated hydroxytoluene, because studies show that it accumulates in fatty tissue. Any chemical that does so should be suspect, he writes, although studies have been mixed - early ones showed baldness, birth defects and liver problems in rats, but later studies didn't.
More emphatic is the Alexandria-based Feingold Association of the United States. It blames synthetic colors, flavors and several preservatives for causing hyperactivity, aggression and learning disabilities, among other problems, and sells a diet containing foods that avoid them.
Jane H. Hersey, the national director, says people often don't know what they're getting when they eat - a feared preservative might unknowingly have been used in the shortening listed on a box of crackers, and the FDA doesn't require that additives in component ingredients be spelled out. And no one knows the effects of mixing different additives.
``When they test the rat, who do they test?'' she asks. ``They find a healthy rat, a young mature healthy rat on a pure diet. . . . And they test him on one single additive.
``You take the average American . . . does the average American eat one chemical a day?
``If you have a typical meal, you may have 500 different additives at one time. You may have a beer with it - what happens when you add alcohol?''
She argues there's no benefit to using additives compared to foods without additives, so why risk it?
``Food is supposed to spoil, isn't it?'' she asks. ``I mean, if it doesn't spoil, is it really food?''
FDA approval isn't enough for her and others. She notes that Red Dye No. 3 is the subject of lawsuits against the government because it has caused cancer in rats in some studies but is still approved for use in things like the cherries in canned fruit cocktail.
``The most spectacular thing about Red No. 3 is that it doubles as a pesticide,'' Hersey says.
Her family avoids bright-colored soft drinks, fries and chicken cooked in oils with certain preservatives, and pepperoni on pizzas. Finding foods free of artificial colors and additives isn't that hard, she says.
And forgoing additives doesn't always mean spending more money, she adds - the more-expensive turkeys often are the ones with the most additives, such as injected butter-flavored oil. A check of ingredients on a popular brand of frozen waffles shows the ``homestyle'' kind includes artificial colors and flavors, while the ``buttermilk'' kind doesn't; both boxes cost the same.
``When you start looking at foods in this way, you have to start questioning things,'' Hersey says. ``And people don't want to do that.''
The search goes on
Well, not all people.
Carol Renae, manager of the Whole Foods Coop in Norfolk, regularly has customers asking for additive-free foods, such as dried fruits without sulfites. But it's not always easy to find what they want.
One mother who didn't want her toddler to eat the day-care center's food was told she could send in her own lunch, but it had to be pre-packaged foodstuffs. She searched in vain for something without artificial additives.
``Unfortunately, I couldn't help her,'' Renae says. ``Usually, if you're going to make the food convenient, you're going to use preservatives.''
Which sort of leaves the father back where he started, and where he probably should be - reading the labels. MEMO: For more information about additives in your favorite foods, call the
Food and Drug Administration's local office in Norfolk at 441-3326, or
the Feingold Association of the United States in Alexandria at (800)
321-3287. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
LAWRENCE JACKSON/Staff
Photo
Some additives are natural, such as soy-derivative lecithin, which
helps keep oil and water properly mixed in ice cream.
by CNB