Bad Chemicals In Foods - Toxic Food Additives (No.4)

This time, I'll focus on "cancer testing" - how FDA or the researchers figure out which chemicals in foods  can be toxic food additives....

Scientists and researchers are looking for the answer. They look at the causes of the deteriorating health of the population and figure out some of the important triggers - the type of food we eat and bad chemicals in foods added by the food manufactures. With non-smoking related cancers representing 80 % of new cancer cases, many people are blaming on the toxic food additives for their health deterioration. Unfortunately or fortunately, there are evidences to suggest that food additives are making us sick...

FDA has a database listing over 3,000 substances which are added to our foods. Food additives have the purpose of adding taste and color to over processed food that has little (natural) flavor and color left. FDA claims they are all safe - including even "MSG" and "Aspartame". As I mentioned on my past posts, many of them are no better than poison. Even if all of the food additives were safe individually, rarely does any food have only one additive in it. Testing for additive safety has been done for individual additives, not for combinations of the additives. They could be harmful in certain combinations. No one knows the effects of the many different additives used in the hundreds of various combinations...

In general, food additives are tested - whether if it causes a cancer or not - by feeding large dosages to small numbers of rats and mice. Large dosages are used to compensate for the small number of animals that can be used (a few hundred is considered a big study... I'm not kidding...). Also, the large dosages can compensate for the possibility that rodents may be less sensitive than people to a particular chemical (as happened with thalidomide). Note: Humans are 5 times more sensitive to the toxic effects of certain food additives than rats and 20 times more sensitive than monkeys.

Some of you might claim that such tests are improper and that large amounts of any chemical would cause cancer. That is not true. Large amounts of most chemicals don't cause cancer. When a large dosage causes cancer, most scientists believe that a smaller amount would also cause cancer, but less frequently. But some toxins might be reasonably safe at tested levels. However, unsafe levels can also be reached if toxins accumulate in human bodies (toxic over-load, some chemicals bioaccumulate - which means that they increase in concentration over time, potentially to generally accepted toxic levels.

It would be nice if lower, more realistic dosages could be used, but a test using low dosages and a small number of animals would be extraordinarily insensitive. It would also be nice if test-tube tests not using any animals were developed that could cheaply and accurately identify cancer-causing chemicals. While some progress has been made in that direction, those tests have not proven reliable. Thus, the standard high-dosage cancer test on small numbers of animals is currently the only practical, reasonably reliable way to identify food additives (and other chemicals) that might cause cancer. Remember, food manufacturers are presenting one-sided and questionable research results to support their use of chemicals without telling us the whole truth. 

Another problem at cancer testing is that poorly calibrated production equipment may mix in more of those chemicals than even the FDA would consider safe.... Bad news keep coming up, huh... :(

The Pesticide Action Network North America and Commonweal  reported that Americans can experience up to 70 daily exposures to residues of a class of toxic chemicals known as "persistent organic pollutants" (POPs), including such chemicals as DDT and dioxin, through their diets. The report, "Nowhere to Hide: Persistent Toxic Chemicals in the U.S. Food Supply," analyzes chemical residue data collected by the FDA and finds persistent chemical contaminants in ALL food groups. 

The Delaney Clause is an important part of the federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. That important consumer-protection clause specifically bans any additive that "is found to induce cancer when ingested by man or animal." The food and chemical industries are seeking to weaken or repeal that law. I do want to talk about "Codex alimentarius" soon... Stand up for your own safety. Make a healthy choice. Read the food labels carefully. You already know there are tons of bad chemicals in foods - toxic food additives.