Conscious Choice: Food Labels for Dummies

December 2005 | Choice Eating

Food Labels for Dummies

By Neal Barrett, Jr.

“Wash up, kids, we’re having benzyl isobutyrate, dipropyl ketone, amyl acetate, 4-methylacetophenone, and butyric acid tonight!”

Some of us among the youthfully impaired actually remember when the food we ate grew in the ground, grazed in fields or swam in the rivers or the seas. A lot of food was seasonal, and we didn’t expect to find it in the marketplace all year round. To overcome this hardship, Grandmother pickled and canned, and Granddad salted and smoked fish and meats. This process was called “preserving,” a noun that has nothing whatever to do with that term today.

Now, thanks to our ever-evolving food industry, we can eat anything we want, any time, and it’s available nearly anywhere. The colors of our foods may not be exactly the shades they used to be, and the flavors may only mimic those that we recall. Still, we don’t have to worry about “freshness” anymore, for, thanks to the miracle of chemistry, many of today’s foods will last nearly forever. Some may give you headaches, affect your concentration, alter your energy level, and increase your risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease and liver damage. Some may cause obesity, depression, damage to the nervous system and digestive disturbances. Others may alter your immune system, increase your blood pressure and give you diarrhea. The good news: Processed, altered, artificial, manipulated foods are packaged more attractively than ever these days!

Food for Eternity

How did we get into this mess, anyway? Whatever happened to real food? For the most part, Progress happened. We learned to do things better than we had before. While we were gaining the knowledge to preserve food longer, store it and distribute it better, and protect it from spoilage and bacterial infection, we lost sight of the natural taste of food, its pleasant appearance, and, in a great many cases, its nutritional value. The reasons the food industry gives for packing our foods with thousands of additives most of us can’t identify — and certainly can’t pronounce — is to:

Give food a longer shelf life, improve its flavor, make it more convenient to prepare, make it more attractive and give it more nutritional value.

At first glance, these seem like reasonable, proper steps to better the quality and appearance of the things we eat. How the industry has accomplished these goals is the problem. To achieve all this, they have added a near-endless horde of chemicals that we do not naturally introduce into our bodies. We are not only consuming altered crackers, meats, vegetables and dairy products, we are eating “non-foods” that consist entirely of chemicals.

A frightening example of just how far the chemical game can go is the list of close to 50 additives that make up the formula for a strawberry flavoring. The list contains only the ingredients of the flavoring itself. What about the additives in the product this chemical stew will enhance?

A few of the chemicals in this “flavoring” are listed in our introductory subhead:

1. benzyl isobutyrate: This is a common ingredient in fragrances. It is used in detergents, soaps and household products.

2. amyl acetate: In addition to its use as a flavoring agent, amyl acetate is used as a paint and lacquer solvent.

3. 4-Methylacetophenone: Another flavoring agent. Harmful if swallowed; irritating to the eyes. One of the nearly 600 additives in cigarettes.

4. butyric acid: Again, a flavoring. A fatty acid; foul-smelling, with the odor of rancid butter. The smell may cause nausea. Used in making plastics and disinfectants. Harmful if inhaled. Corrosive.

5. dipropyl ketone: A flavoring. May cause coughing, sore throat, headaches, dizziness, vomiting. Used as a solvent for many resins.

Certainly, you won’t be getting vats full of this stuff in a serving of strawberry flavoring, but we are ingesting these toxic chemicals and others day after day, year after year. And, just as all the good food we eat works its way through our bodies, so does all the bad stuff. How many additives do we eat every year? One source says 150 pounds for every person in the country. Definitely non appétit!

So, Don’t Eat?

What can we do then? Most informed shoppers already know to read the labels on packages of food. Are all additives poisonous? No, but do you know which ones aren’t? The rule of thumb is: If you can’t pronounce it, don’t eat it. Fine, but where does that leave us? How do we manage to avoid partially hydrogenated oils, which seem to be in virtually everything these days? How do we avoid all the foods that have been modified, or genetically engineered? We already know the answer, we’ve heard it all before: Don’t eat junk foods. Avoid candy, processed meats, cookies, white bread, sugars, processed anything. Get back to real fruits and vegetables, whole wheat, the proper portions of meat, fish and chicken. It’s not easy, and we don’t like to hear we have to deprive ourselves of lots of things we like. But to ensure that our families stay healthy, we’re going to have to change our habits. The FDA lists more than 2,800 additives and 3,000 chemicals dumped into our food supply. We have to change. No matter how hard it hurts. We can no longer afford to expose our families to these poisons every day.

Let’s Act

When I was 10, I got a chemistry set for Christmas. This was considered a progressive, educational toy at the time. Of course, the first thing I wanted to make was something that would smell bad, catch fire or explode. If my parents didn’t understand this urge to create on Christmas morning, they did by Dec. 26. Dad and I had a talk, and it was suggested I try some of the formulas that came with the set.

I am not saying the food industry wants to do us harm. I’m sure they don’t. What they want to do is make tasty, nutritious food that we’ll all want to buy. But, in their pursuit of excellence, they have crossed the line and introduced some dangerous, toxic ingredients into our diets. As responsible citizens, we need to remind the industry — and ourselves — that the formulas for peas, carrots, tomatoes, fruits, grains and everything else we eat was somehow chemically correct right from the start.

And by the way, I was only 9 when I fooled around with that chemistry set. But even then, I had enough sense not to try to make food. …

Neal Barrett, Jr. has published over 50 novels and numerous short stories. He also writes columns, screenplays and the occasional historical marker.

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