This weekend, I had the pleasure of going to a seminar with a sports psychologist as a guest speaker. Along with various other topics, the subject of what to feed an athlete came up. As predicted, the speaker went over the bad food rigmarole: cut out white sugar, get off of white flour, forget you ever discovered bacon etc. etc. As I sat and listened to the speech, I found my mind wandering, thinking about the weather, where I was going to stop for gas on the way home, if my cat needed to be de-wormed, and how many pecks were really in a bushel after all.
Then the speaker said something really interesting.
Many food colorings, not just Red #40, have been shown to detrimentally affect the health of people, particularly children and young adults. Citing Dr. Michael Roizen, “We like food that looks like it did when it came from the ground…Steer clear of Yellow #5, Yellow #6, Red #3, Red #40, Blue #1, Blue #2, Green #3, and Orange B on ingredient labels.”
Holy, I thought, that seems like quite a long list of items to avoid. But really, didn’t the developed world also have this information readily at their fingertips, and weren’t all of the food manufacturers also avoiding these colorants?
Still thinking about it after the seminar, I went to the grocery store to buy lunch stuffers for my kids for the upcoming week. “Before I put anything into my shopping cart, I am going to read the label,” I thought.
Well I didn’t see anything “bad” on the labels of anything I shopped. It was true, I didn’t understand all of the nomenclature I saw on the side of the containers, but clearly those “unintelligible” ingredients must be fancy ways of saying “fortified with all sorts of good things to make you healthier”. The pictures on the front of the products said they were great for you and many even stated that they had nutrients added. Happily satisfied that I was doing the best by my growing family, I took my purchases home. Just for my own curiosity, I thought, when I get home I will also look up the definitions of those vitamins or whatever they were at the ends of the ingredients lists.
I have to say I was shocked by what I found out. According to the International Numbering System (INS) for Food Additives, which utilizes what is called the Codex Alimentarius (the international food standards organization of the World Health Organisation and Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) there are literally hundreds of items that may be added to commercially packaged food for reasons such as preserving, emulsifying, coagulating, regulating acidity, enhancing flavor, glazing, thickening, thinning, stabilizing, anti-oxidizing, and coloring (find it at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_food_additives,_Codex_Alimentarius.) Each food additive that is used in commercial production has an abbreviated or alternate name. Companies may choose which name of the item they want to include on their packaging (i.e. actual name or alternate.)
I got out the items I had just purchased and compared them to the INS list. Much to my dismay, several of the lunch stuffs I purchased had food coloring in them, the very kind I was so determined to avoid! Yellow #5,Yellow #6, Red #40, Blue #1, and Red #3 were all listed under their alternate names the prepackaged groceries I brought home. Here’s the short version of the dichotomy I discovered:
| Listed on the Ingredient Label | INS Description |
| Tartrazine | Yellow #5 |
| Monoazo | Yellow #6 |
| Allura Red | Red #40 |
| E133 | Blue #1 |
| Erythrosine | Red #3 |
So here I was, trying to be a conscientious shopper, purchasing for my family’s health, and I had just brought home a load of lunch items with questionable ingredients! What is the average, time-pressed shopper to do? Walk into the grocery store armed with a list of 500 food additives and their various names? Clearly this approach seems like an awful lot of work!
How about take a bite out of your grocery bill and increase your healthy food intake by growing a garden this year? While we still rely on our favorite grocery stores for much of the food we consume, we can make a real difference in the quality and control of what we eat when that food is grown in our backyard. Understanding only a few basic principles of horticulture (i.e. that most edible plants like lots of sun, ample water, and some nutrients added to the soil periodically), producing health-packed, organic food for your family is easy and fun to do! Let’s take back our own nutrition; on my shopping list for today: milk, buns, and carrot seed!
