Bad Chemicals In Foods - Toxic Food Additives (No.3)

I'm feeding you tons of information about bad chemicals in foods. Are you full with the information of toxic food additive???? This time, I'll show you how to read food labels and how to use the information.

No. 1)  Major toxic food additives
No. 2)  What "catches" on food labels to watch out for

No. 3)  What food labels says - (1) Nutrition Facts   (2) Ingredients

1) Nutrition Facts 
This is good and useful, but not the most important information you need to get from food labels about the item. It gives you information on calories, grams of fat, cholesterol, sodium, carbohydrates, dietary fiber, sugars, and protein in each serving plus some percentages of a few nutrients. What they don't tell you is that:

 1 gram of fat = approximately 9 calories.
 1 gram of protein = approximately 4 calories.            
 1 gram of carbohydrate = approximately 4 calories.
 4 grams of sugar = 1 teaspoon of sugar

Ex: a 123 calorie snack with 7 g of fat, 2 g of protein and 13 g of carbohydrate of which 12 g of the carbohydrate is sugar.

- To get fat calories, multiply calories from fat.(9x7=63). To get % of fat, divide 63 fat calories by 123 snack calories to get 51% fat.
- To get protein calories, multiply calories from protein.(4x2=8) To get % of protein, divide 8 protein calories by 123 snack calories to get 7% protein.
- To get carbohydrate calories, multiply 4x13=52 calories from carbohydrate. To get % of carbohydrate, divide 52 carbohydrate calories by 123 snack calories to get 42% carbohydrate.
- To get the number of teaspoons of sugar in the snack, divide 12g of sugar in the snack by 4, to get 3 teaspoons of sugar.

• Start here:  Note the size of a single serving and how many servings are in the package.

• Check total calories per serving:  Look at the serving size and how many servings you’re really consuming.  If you double the servings you eat, you double the calories and nutrients, including the Percent Daily Value (% DV).
  
  
• Limit these nutrients :  Limit your total fat to no more than 56~78g per day — including no more than 16g of saturated fat, less than 2g of trans fat, and less than 300 mg cholesterol (for a 2,000 calorie diet).

• Get enough of these nutrients :  Make sure you get 100 % of the fiber, vitamins and other nutrients you need everyday.

• Quick guide to % DV :  The % DV section tells you the percent of each nutrient in a single serving, in terms of the daily recommended amount.  As a guide, if you want to consume less of a nutrient (such as saturated fat, cholesterol or sodium), choose foods with a lower % DV — 5 % or less is low.  If you want to consume more of a nutrient (such as fiber), seek foods with a higher % DV — 20 % or more is high.

Tip 1:  Remember that the information shown in these panels is based on 2,000 calories per day.  You may need to consume less or more than 2,000 calories depending upon your age, gender, activity level, and whether you’re trying to lose, gain or maintain your weight.  Find out your personal daily limits.

     - Low            40 calories per serving
     - Moderate   100 calories per serving
     - High           400 calories or more per serving

Tip 2:  When the Nutrition Facts panel says the food contains “0 g” of trans fat, it means the food contains less than 0.5 grams of trans fat per serving. When the Nutrition Facts label says a food contains “0 g” of trans  fat, but includes “partially hydrogenated oil” in the ingredient list, it means the food contains trans fat, but less than 0.5 grams of trans fat per serving. So, if you eat more than one serving, you could quickly reach your daily limit of trans fat.

Tip 3:  There is no % DV shown for trans fat on the panel because FDA doesn't have enough scientific information to set this value. I recommend eating less than 20 calories or (less than 2g of trans fat) a day – that’s less than 1 % of your total daily calories (for a 2,000-calorie-a-day diet).


  2) Ingredients

These bad chemicals in foods are widely used in the more industrialized countries. These toxic food additives are normally defined as non nutritive substances (intentionally added to food), generally in small quantities, to improve its appearance destroyed by processing, flavor, texture or preservation. Even though it were only tiny amount, they might rise to harm your health and we should avoid.

Food scientist, toxicologists and control officials mention food problems in the following decreasing order: microbial contamination of food, natural toxic in food, environmental contamination of food and food additives. Food additives serve the interests of both the consumer and the producer of foodstuffs since they inhibit the spoilage of food, thus reducing the losses and enabling greater production at a lower cost. They increase the viability of the diet, make preparation of food more convenient and help stabilize the quality of food. Many countries require a toxicological analysis of any food additive which determines, in most cases, the average amount of a substance expressed in mg/kg of body weight which can be taken daily in the diet over a lifetime without risk considering all known factors.

Note: food flavouring substances are different from food additives as there are several thousand flavoring substances which occur naturally. Most flavouring substances are identical substances to the tens of thousands which have been detected in the flavouring component of natural foods such as fruits, spices, vegetables, milk and meat products. The natural flavouring component of foods is invariably an extremely complicated mixture comprising a few dozen to several thousand different chemicals of natural origin.

A Good Rule of Thumb
- If the list of ingredients is long, there's probably a lot of chemical additives in the product. It’s best to avoid these foods because of the unknown health effects of combinations of food additives.

- If the list of ingredients is short, it may or may not have harmful additives in it.

- Ingredients are listed on the label in order of predominance by weight...the ingredient that weighs the most is listed first, the ingredient that weighs the least is listed last. If there’s a questionable additive on the list, the closer it is to the front of the list, the more you put yourself at risk.

- Generally only those ingredients that are required by law to be listed on the label are listed. So, you never really know if there are any other ingredients in the product that are not listed on the label.

- Cut Back : Not toxic, but large amounts may be unsafe or promote bad nutrition -
Caffeine, corn syrup, dextrose (Corn Sugar, Glucose), fructose, high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenatated starch hydrolysate, invert sugar, lactitol, maltitol, mannitol, polydextrose, salatrim, salt, sorbitol, sugar, tagatose, xylitol

- Caution : May pose a risk and needs to be better tested. Try to avoid -
Artificial colorings (Citrus red 2, Red 40), brominated vegetable oil (BVO), butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT), diacetyl, heptyl paraben, quinine, stevia/rebiana

- Avoid : Unsafe in amounts consumed or is very poorly tested and not worth any risk -
Acesulfame potassium, artificial colorings (blue 2, green 3, orange B, red 3, yellow 5, yellow 6), aspartame (Nutrasweet), butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA), cyclamate (Not legal in US), hydrogenated vegetable oil, olestra (olean) , partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, potassium bromate, propyl gallate, saccharin, sodium nitrate, sodium nitrite.

Now you know what the food label says about bad chemicals in foods and how to read the information about the toxic food additives. Read the label carefully before you buy it.