If you need another reason to eat more raw foods then this could be it. Keep reading to find out the chilling facts about our westernized “non-whole foods diet”
Non-foods. Faux foods. Dead foods. These are just some of the names I use to refer to packaged and processed foods “created” by big food conglomerates such as Kraft, General Mills, and McDonald’s. Part of what makes these foods so deadly is that they are laden with food additives.
Big Business
The total U.S. market for food additives is an estimated $5.8 billion, a huge increase from $1.3 billion in 1978. Food sellers are very clever that most consumers are more likely to buy products that contain additives that render their foods more appealing, in one way or another. They spend, therefore, more than $1.4 billion annually to introduce 10,000 new food products into the market.
Most recently, we’ve witnessed the unfortunate introduction of “functional foods” such as Wonder Bread with DHA, Tropicana Orange with Omega-3s, and many more foods that add one healthy element to make it more appealing to the masses without providing any additional nutritional value.
The chilling reality is that it takes many years of research and unfortunate trial and error for governing bodies to realize the true effects of many of the food additives in our food supply. As an example, in 1978, there were 35 widely used additives that had been approved as safe for food but have since been removed as unsafe, most because they were found be carcinogenic.
Generally Recognized As Safe (GRAS)
But just how are such substances established as safe for human consumption?
Foods approved for human consumption need to be deemed as “Generally Recognized As Safe” or GRAS. Such foods are placed on the GRAS list and then ready for our bittersweet enjoyment.
The GRAS list was established in 1958. However, substances added to food before that time were exempt from the Food Additives Amendment, which created the GRAS list. Therefore, additives like saccharin and many of the later banned food additives were, at the time, deemed safe because a handful of scientists simply decided they were.
Needless to say, over the past 50 years new research has brought awareness to the need for proper food additive testing. In fact, many of the food additives added to the GRAS list early on did not even have adequate testing. As a result of these shortcomings, in 1969, U.S. President Richard Nixon ordered the FDA to re-test all 415 pre-1958 substances on the GRAS list.
Unfortunately, under new rule, decades later the federal government weakened the GRAS additive requirements. As of the late 1990s, food manufacturers simply had to notify the FDA of their additives GRAS and provide minimal evidence to support their claims.
This easier approval process was put in place to save the FDA money, since they believed that passing the buck to the manufacturers would allow the FDA to gain increased awareness of new ingredients in the nation’s food supply.
Before this time, food manufacturers were required to go through a stricter petitioning process before their additives could be approved for mass consumption.
A step in the wrong direction to the say the least!
This is just a brief introduction to the nonsense that goes on in our food supply. And I’ll be giving you more of the gritty details over the coming weeks. For now, do yourself a favour and avoid foods that come in a package or box.
Stick to a natural whole foods diet and live with vitality!
