List: American Processed Foods banned in other nations because of dangerous chemicals
Last edited Fri Jun 21, 2013, 12:37 PM - Edit history (1)
If you enjoy snacks and drinks like Mtn Dew, Chex Mix, Hungry Man frozen dinners, or roughly 80 percent of all the packaged foods sold in your average, American grocery store, you may want to sit down before reading this.
Many of the chemicals found in America's most common foods are considered to be so unhealthy that they're actually ILLEGAL in other countries.
A new book on nutrition lists six food additives that are found in a wide range of popular groceries sanctioned by the Food and Drug Administration, but foreign governments have determined to be too dangerous to allow their citizens to consume.
One of the most common 'Bad Boys' is different variations of food coloring, which actually is made from petroleum and is found in everyday items like soda, sports drinks, mac and cheese, cake, candy and several other common, American products.
The chemicals used to make these different dyes have proven to cause various different cancers and can even potentially mutate healthy DNA.
Do you like citrus drinks, like Mt. Dew, Squirt or Fresca? Then you also like brominated vegetable oil, which is banned in more than 100 countries because it has been linked to basically every form of thyroid disease - from cancer to autoimmune diseases - known to man.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2345564/Shocking-list-US-foods-BANNED-countries-containing-dangerous-chemicals.html#ixzz2WrD2XdYt
In Singapore, you can get sentenced to 15 years in prison and a $500,000 fine for using a chemical in food products that's common in frozen dinners
Mtn Dew and products used to keep carpets from catching on fire are made from the same chemical
A chemical found in Chex Mix is known to cause cancer in rats
More:
http://caltonnutrition.com/article.aspx?pid=100
and more of more:
http://www.shape.com/blogs/shape-your-life/13-banned-foods-still-allowed-us
= new reply since forum marked as read
I am not doubting what I am reading, but I prefer more reliable sources.
One link is to the guy flogging the book whi is the source for the Mail story.
The other is a "fitness" site.
I am looking for link to EU regulations and peer reviewed papers.
Weirdly, my conservative coworkers put more faith in a British tabloid than hard science. If I had showed them a paper by a university on the issue, it would have been dismissed as "liberal nonsense". So, the article is helpful (until they learn it is from a "European newspaper", then it magically looses credibility again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanically_separated_meat
it can constitute up to 15 percent of ground beef without additional labeling, and it can also be added to other meat products such as beef-based processed meats
The product does not meet the legal requirements for sale in the United Kingdom, and the European Union has banned it and other mechanically-separated meats for human consumption.
in europe you cant legaly feed "cat food" to humans. and certainly not to kids at school
The whole sorry story of processed food companies is told in a book called Salt, Fat, Sugar. Here's a link to some further info about the author, a Pulitzer Prize winner:
Michael Moss is an investigative reporter with The New York Times, having joined the paper in 2000. In 2010, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for his investigation of the dangers of contaminated meat. Mr. Moss’s hamburger article was the centerpiece of a body of work focused on surprising and troubling holes in the system to keep food safe.
Before coming to The Times, Mr. Moss was a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, New York Newsday, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Daily Sentinel in Grand Junction, Colo., and the High Country News in Lander, Wyo.
He was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 2006 for his reporting on the lack of protective armor for soldiers in Iraq, and in 1999 for a team effort on Wall Street’s emerging influence in the nursing home industry. Mr. Moss received an Overseas Press Club citation in 2006 for stories on the faulty justice system for American-held detainees in Iraq.
The NY Times printed several articles that are excerpted from his book. Here's one:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/books/review/salt-sugar-fat-by-michael-moss.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
I am reading the book now and I must say, it is a jaw-dropper.
The audacity and the foolishness with which these companies behaved in the name of profit will take your breath away. It is little wonder that Americans are eating food with substances banned in other countries.
I highly encourage everyone to read this book, but if you can't, the takeaway for me so far is:
1) People who eat processed food are the victims of corporate monopolies, a monopoly which should never have come about. Food distribution systems should be regional, not national.
2) The FDA did try to step in but the food companies with their deep pockets beat them up so badly that they never really were ever to accomplish much.
3) The system the food processors built is almost entirely dependent on salt, sugar, and fat and as such they have boxed themselves in (no pun intended) and now have nowhere to go.
And finally, knowledgeable people in the food industry (people I know personally) tell me it is only a matter of time before this system crashes.
Twenty years ago I sat on a consumer panel for a large, upscale grocery chain here in the Northeast. I will forever smile when I think of one of the parents telling the store, "Sugar Honey Grahams will never cross my child's lips!" I tell this story because I want to make the point that this revolution has been a long time in coming. Some people were aware 20 years ago: now even more people are aware.
Cher
Do you know why?
And yet, the British eat them gleefully. Well...maybe not the haggis...
