Western Herbal Medicine and Nutrition by Gabriel MacSharry

Reasons to avoid Processed Foods

processed food

I tell everyone i see at the clinic to avoid processed foods. For me its ok because I’ve been at it for years, but for the average Irish person today its not the easiest of tasks.

The following article by Cait Curren published in the march/april 2007 edition of Organic Matters magazine captures the importance of why it is essential to move towards removing all processed foods from your diet.

Living is a dangerous business, and that most life-giving of tasks – consuming food – has become a very hazardous business indeed. We live like no other generation before us. In the course of fifty years we have moved from a diet based mainly on locally grown or reared produce uncontaminated by chemical inputs and based on extensive farming practices to one largely made up of processed foods containing a cocktail of additives, pesticides, herbicides, hormones, antibiotics and genetically modified ingredients. This is rather a lot for the human body to cope with in such a short space of time given that our diet has evolved for millennia.

“In the last fifty years, over 80,000 chemicals have been developed and put to use”

Clearly the food we consume is closely related to the rise in disease such as cancer, which is now up there with heart disease as the main killer. We are told officially that people are living longer but anecdotally we all know of the increasing numbers of people dying at younger ages. The World Health Organization (WHO) has released a report stating that one-quarter of the world's disease burden, and one-third of the disease burden among children, is due to environmental factors that could be modified.

Industry control

In the last fifty years, over 80,000 chemicals have been developed and put to use. They have become such an integral part of our lives that most of us don’t notice that we are exposed to chemicals daily in the air we breathe, the homes we live in and the food we eat. We have become a giant experiment in toxic ingestion and we consider it quite normal. The two main catalysts for this huge change were the accelerated development of chemicals during World War 2 and the rise of giant multinational food corporations/chemical companies. Food became a commodity for trading and profit rather than a basic human right. Now, control of the world’s food supply lies in the hands of a few big corporations. The most shocking aspect of this is how complicit governments have been in allowing it to happen. Representatives of these corporations have infiltrated all levels of regulation ensuring that decisions made are favourable to their businesses.

Is food safe?

The food industry buys the cheapest possible ingredients, loads them with additives in processing to make them look more attractive and to extend shelf life and makes as much profit as possible. Traditionally, consumers trusted the people who manufactured their food and never questioned the safety of what they were eating. After all, the industry is regulated and it must be safe. BSE is probably the biggest single factor that changed all that.

The head of the food safety authority in the UK was famously quoted last year as saying that he felt safer eating organic food. Here in Ireland, the Food Safety Authority (FSAI) is the body charged with protecting the health and interests of consumers by ensuring that food consumed, distributed, marketed or produced in the state meets with the highest standards of food safety. Ray Ellard of the FSAI says that “All foods go through scientific assessment in line with Irish legislation and European Food Safety Authority standards, there is a huge safety margin built in.” About 1,500 food products are tested each year for 150 chemical compounds. The FSAI is planning to extend the tests to a much wider range of compounds in future as testing technology develops at their new lab.

“Traditionally, consumers trusted the people who manufactured their food and never questioned the safety of what they were eating”

To some, testing 1,500 items of the millions consumed in the country each year may not seem significant. “The process is difficult, time consuming and expensive,” says Ray “but we are going to extend the scope and range of what we test for.” At present food items are tested for individual compounds only and the cumulative effect of several treatments on a product is not investigated. This ‘cocktail effect’ is beginning to cause serious concern among some scientists and it is believed that a combination of certain chemicals can cause adverse effects that the application of one compound would not. “Everything is based on science,” Ray Ellard says, and therein may lie the problem. In this so-called scientific age we have come to rely on science as the new religion. But science is only as good as the latest available information that it possesses. Scientists once believed the world was flat and science repudiates instinctive knowledge as having no value. We know instinctively that much of what we consume and are exposed to is bad for us but, until scientific evidence can prove that, officially no danger exists.

In the final analysis, responsibility for our health lies with each individual. It is up to us to check the facts, read the labels and reject what we feel is not safe. No government, industry or agency can be trusted to do that for us.

What not to eat

Artificial colourings

Most artificial colourings used in food are synthetic dyes. Food colours belong to a group of chemicals called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons that are suspected of being carcinogenic and many have been banned. Whenever possible, choose foods without dyes. They are used purely for cosmetic purposes and mostly used in foods of poor nutritional quality to make them look attractive, particularly to children.

Aspartame

This is a sugar substitute used in diet products and sold under brand names like Nutrasweet. An amino acid in aspartame called phenylalanine can cause mental retardation in those who can’t metabolise the substance. Aspartame is also thought to alter brain function and behaviour in those who consume it. It is also associated with other symptoms such as headaches, dizziness and seizures.

Sucrose/table sugar

Sugar which is a simple molecular substance artificially refined from complex carbohydrates, thus called a refined carbohydrate, can be found in most of our foods. An excessive refined carbohydrate consumption has been directly associated with a high incidence of both criminal and antisocial behaviour. Research studies among thousands of incarcerated juvenile offenders, found clear correlation between high sucrose/junk food intake and the incidence of antisocial behaviour.

Hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated vegetable oil

Partial hydrogenation is an industrial process used to make oil more solid; provide longer shelf-life in baked products; provide longer fry-life for cooking oils. It can be found in a huge variety of food products and is of no value except to the bank balance of the manufacturer. The big problem is that partially hydrogenated oil is laden with trans fat. This can cause heart disease and diabetes.

Monosodium glutamate (MSG)

MSG is a widely used flavour enhancer. The substance is like glutamic acid, an amino acid that is used in the function of the brain. Children don’t have the enzymes that help to metabolise MSG in adults so children or pregnant women should avoid consuming MSG. Other symptoms associated with MSG are headaches, tightness in the chest and a burning sensation in the forearms and back of the neck.

Nitrite and Nitrate

Sodium nitrite and sodium nitrate are used as food preservatives and would be most commonly known to us for their use incurred meats such as bacon and sausages as well as cooked sliced meats. Nitrate can easily be converted into nitrite and combined with secondary amines; it forms nitrosamines which are linked to stomach cancer. This reaction occurs most readily at high temperature which is why you are advised not to cremate your bacon slices when frying.

Sulphites

Sulphur is used to keep dried fruit fresh. It is also used to prevent discolouration, bacterial growth and fermentation in wine. Several studies have shown that sulphur can cause severe allergic reactions particularly in asthmatics.

Cabaryl

The average carrot is treated with up to thirteen different active ingredients made up of three fungicides, four insecticides, five herbicides and one nematicide. One of these is Carbaryl, a widely used broad-spectrum insecticide. Carbaryl can overstimulate the nervous system causing nausea, dizziness, and confusion. At high exposures, it can cause respiratory paralysis and death.

GM food

GM technology is unproven. Based on both scientific theory and experimental data, it can be concluded beyond any doubt that genetic engineering of plants and animals may potentially cause them to unexpectedly contain substances harmful to people who eat them. GM soya is in about 60 percent of all processed food as vegetable oil, soya flour, lecithin and soya protein. GM maize is in about 50 percent of processed foods as corn, corn starch, cornflour and corn syrup. GM tomato puree is sold in some supermarkets and GM enzymes are used throughout the food processing industry. Government regulations on labelling exclude 95-98 percent of the products containing GM ingredients because they ignore derivatives.
To watch the excellent GM film "The future of Food" see the following article Why we say NO to GM foods

[ Back ]