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Healing Our World: Weekly Comment By Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D. What Is That Flavor?
Enough of science and art, It is easy to feel overwhelmed by world events and to desire to retreat to the relative safety of one’s daily life. How can anyone wrap their mind around the daily devastation of the Earth’s life support systems, the deadly polluting of the soil, water, and air, the killing of innocent people because of religious or political motivations, or the senseless deaths of four million children each year around the world from pollution? However, the idea that it is possible to find safety by ignoring those events, believing that they don’t affect us and going on with one’s daily life is a deadly illusion. Our daily lives, seemingly far removed from national and world affairs, are filled with dangers, many of them contained in what so many of us take for granted – our food. Our food, particularly processed food, has a long history of being manipulated to maximize profit. A vast industry arose after the end of the Second World War in the United States to make processed food palatable, and the result is that a few little known companies make the complex chemicals that are responsible for the tastes and flavors that have become trademarks for fast food restaurants and makers of canned and boxed processed food. Those companies have created serious health problems and vast amounts of toxic pollution. Fast food has become a national pastime and is available everywhere, from restaurants, stadiums, airports, zoos, schools, cruise ships, supermarkets, and even in hardware stores. I was incredulous a few years ago when I saw a McDonalds had been built right in a Home Depot store in Los Angeles. In the United States, we now spend more money on fast food – approaching $200 billion - than we do on higher education.
Fast food hamburgers are high in calories and fat (Photo credit unknown)There are serious addiction issues for those people around the world whose primary diet consists of fast food, which is often high in fat. In fact, fatty foods have been found to be addictive by researchers at Rockefeller University in New York. They found that regularly eating fatty food products can quickly reconfigure the body’s hormonal system to want more and more fat.Those cravings we have all experienced are actually real and can result in a true addiction. The researchers also found that early exposure to fatty food can influence children’s choices, making them always seek a similar diet and increasing the likelihood of obesity in later life. A few years ago, Eric Schlosser published a book called “Fast Food Nation,” where he detailed the deceptive - and unhealthful – practices of the fast food and processed industries. Like most revelations, most folks read the articles about these concerns and then went on with their lives and continued to eat the food. Since then, the industry has gotten even bigger and the problems remain. One important issue is that the flavors that attract most people to fast food are not from the food, but from a carefully created chemical mix. Since 90 percent of the food purchased by Americans is processed food, it is likely that you have some in your refrigerator or kitchen cupboard. A quick glance at some of the ingredient lists will reveal that most contain “natural flavor” and “artificial flavor.” Both are chemical concoctions designed to deceive. International Flavors and Fragrances, Inc. (IFF) in Dayton, New Jersey, is the world’s largest maker of chemical flavors. They also make the smell of six of the 10 bestselling perfumes in the United States. Using the same technology as is used for food, they also make the smell of many household products such as deodorant, furniture polish, dishwashing detergent, bath soap, shampoo, floor wax, and others. “State-of-the-art technology helps us produce flavors for any savory application," the IFF website proclaims. "IFF's expertise ranges from seasonings to compounded flavors to process flavors, and includes encapsulation technology. Our savory flavors combine unique IFF processes, proprietary materials, and superior creativity to provide a complete range of authentic profiles that meet any regulatory or product specification.”
University student enjoys a flavorful bite. (Photo credit unknown)“Fast Food Nation” reminds us that, “The human craving for flavor has been a largely unacknowledged and unexamined force in history. Royal empires have been built, unexplored lands have been traversed, great religions and philosophies have been forever changed by the spice trade. In 1492, Christopher Columbus set sail to find seasoning. Today, the influence of flavour in the world marketplace is no less decisive. The rise and fall of corporate empires - of soft-drink companies, snack-food companies and fast-food chains - is frequently determined by how their products taste."The highly processed nature of today’s fast foods results in mostly tasteless products. It is the chemicals that are added that give the foods their taste. Flavor companies are not required to disclose the ingredients of their additives by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as long as all the chemicals are on the agency’s “generally recognized as safe (GRAS)” list. This unsettling list has contained many formulations and chemicals that were eventually banned once evidence of their danger was proven by public interest groups. This lack of public disclosure enables the companies to maintain the secrecy of their formulas. For example, a typical artificial strawberry flavor additive in a national fast food chain’s strawberry milk shake contains: amyl acetate, amyl butyrate, amyl valerate, anethol, anisyl formate, benzyl acetate, benzyl isobutyrate, butyric acid, cinnamyl isobutyrate, cinnamyl valerate, cognac essential oil, diacetyl, dipropyl ketone, ethyl acetate, ethyl amyl ketone, ethyl butyrate, ethyl cinnamate, ethyl heptanoate, ethyl heptylate, ethlyl lactate, ethyl methylphenylglycidate, ethyl nitrate, ethyl propionate, ethyl valerate, heliotropin, hydroxyphenyl-2-butonone (10% solution in alcohol), a-ionone, isobutyl anthranilate, isobutyl butyrate, lemon essential oil, maltol, 4-methylactophenone, methyl anthranilate, methyl benzoate, methyl cinnamate, methyl heptine carbonate, methyl naphthyl ketone, methyl salicylate, mint essential oil, neroli essential oil, nerolin, neryl isobutyrate, orris butter, phenethyl alcohol, rose, rum ether, g-undecalactone, vanillin and solvent. Not only is the effect of these chemicals on the body largely unstudied, but the manufacture of each of them creates a huge amount of toxic pollution that makes its way into our air, water, and soil. There are chemicals to mimic every possible taste and smell. Hexanal creates the smell of freshly cut grass. The smell of body odor is simulated by 3-methyl butanoic acid. Methyl-2-peridylketone makes something taste like popcorn and ethyl-3-hydroxybutonoate makes whatever you put it in taste like marshmallow. Solvents such as benzene, carbon disulfide, methylene chloride, and ketone are a few of the names of the 49 million tons of solvents that are produced annually in the United States, and 9.8 million workers are exposed to them daily.
Colored jellybeans taste and look different from each other due to the different chemicals they contain. (Photo credit unknown)Yet chemical industries continue to deny their impact on the Earth, their workers, and the consumers of their products. It is much cheaper for them to pay out the few wrongful death lawsuits that are brought against them than to clean up their acts and treat their workers with dignity and respect.Ever wonder about that phony butter used on popcorn in theaters and in those microwaveable packets? Its strange smell and aftertaste have made many of us wonder what it is. This chemical is quite dangerous and has already killed. Last year, the "St. Louis Post-Dispatch" newspaper reported that over the last few decades, more than 30 workers have contracted the fatal lung diseasebronchiolitis obliterans, at the Glister-Mary Lee Popcorn plant in St. Louis, Missouri. This disease destroys the lungs, and all these people will suffocate without complete lung transplants. Federal officials believe the workers contracted the disease by breathing the fumes of the chemical that makes that fake butter flavor in popcorn and other foods! The flavoring contains the chemical diacetyl. The company claims that it has begun taking precautions by having employees in some areas of the plant wear respirators. One has to wonder why they weren’t doing this all along. Things are not as they seem and disassociating from what is going on in the world can have disastrous effects. Avoiding questionable food sources is one way to help reinforce the awareness that we are all part of an intricate web of life on this Earth. Eating more simply can help break the chain of disconnection and separation from the natural world that the obscene food processing practices of today foster. We shouldn't have to greet a meal with fear, and our meal should not be responsible for environmental destruction. RESOURCES 1. Learn more about the safety of food additives at: http://www.cspinet.org/reports/chemcuisine.htm 2. The Campaign for Food Safety can help you protect yourself at: http://www.purefood.org/index.htm 3. Check out the Organic Consumers Association at: http://www.organicconsumers.org/info.stm 4. Look for food co-ops near you for the best in food. You can find a listing for many at the Co-Op America Green Pages Online at: http://www.coopamerica.org/gp/ 5. Want to feed the homeless and needy in your community wholesome foods? Visit the Food Not Bombs webpage at: http://home.earthlink.net/~foodnotbombs/ 6. Keep up with the various campaigns challenging McDonalds at: http://www.mcspotlight.org/ 7. Visit International Flavors and Fragrances, Inc. website at: http://www.iff.com/Internet.nsf/ProdSavory!OpenForm {Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D. is a writer and teacher in Seattle and the author of "Healing Our World," A Journey from the Darkness Into the Light," available at: http://www.xlibris.com/HealingOurWorld.html and “Of This Earth, Reflections on Connections,” available at: http://ofthisearth.org. Please send your thoughts, comments, and visions to him at: jackie@healingourworld.com and visit his website at: http://www.healingourworld.com} |
