The squeamish and the faint of heart, turn away now. If you don’t like bugs, and you have a sense of personal hygiene, you won’t like this. This research explores all the bad stuff that SOMEHOW makes its way into our food. For example, the fact that a lot of stuff has bugs in it. Not safe, not sanitary, and no-where near hygienic. Our food has a ton of bad ingredients in it.
If you’ve ever been to the beach, you’ve seen this first ingredient. That’s right, sand’s in your food. According to Health.com, it’s used in salt, soup and coffee creame, “as a flow agent and partly because it does a nice job of absorbing a little bit of atmospheric humidity that would cause clumping in a variety of things”. Hey, it’s not that bad… If it’s in our food, surely it’s OK to eat? Safe or not, it’s in our food, labeled as silicon dioxide. Hide the truth from the public with fake names, that’s the way to go!
If you’ve ever been to the beach, you’ve seen this first ingredient. That’s right, sand’s in your food. According to Health.com, it’s used in salt, soup and coffee creame, “as a flow agent and partly because it does a nice job of absorbing a little bit of atmospheric humidity that would cause clumping in a variety of things”. Hey, it’s not that bad… If it’s in our food, surely it’s OK to eat? Safe or not, it’s in our food, labeled as silicon dioxide. Hide the truth from the public with fake names, that’s the way to go!
Second on the list of ingredients is Pink Slime, the stuff that caused a huge stir around several huge fast food companies, McDonalds, Burger King, and Taco Bell. Pink Slime, according to Health.com, is “Derived from the bits of meat clinging to fat”. That’s not that bad, right? WRONG. Because afterwards, they spray it with Ammonia Gas, which is highly hazardous and can cause a whole horrifying array of symptoms to humans, and only so that they can kill a couple of germs that are ‘probably’ there. The gas could probably do worse damage to us than the hypothetical germs in the pink stuff would.
Moving on; next up is Cellulose. Cellulose is an ingredient mainly derived from cotton and wood pulp. What’s it for? For keeping food from sticking together, obviously. Who thought that wood pulp might be nice in cheese and ice cream, the world may never know… Cellulose isn’t just un-appetizing, it’s dangerous, because we can’t digest it. Someone tell the genius that thought this concoction up that food’s meant to be DIGESTED, not STORED. Thanks!
Moving on; next up is Cellulose. Cellulose is an ingredient mainly derived from cotton and wood pulp. What’s it for? For keeping food from sticking together, obviously. Who thought that wood pulp might be nice in cheese and ice cream, the world may never know… Cellulose isn’t just un-appetizing, it’s dangerous, because we can’t digest it. Someone tell the genius that thought this concoction up that food’s meant to be DIGESTED, not STORED. Thanks!
Alright, all tree-flavored cheese strings aside, let’s see what else is on the list of evil ingredients… Oh, look, it’s a fake food dye! Fake food dyes, such as the eerily bright yellow dye of most Mac ‘n Cheese varieties, are made mostly of petroleum-derived materials, and are made to make food look “Fun!” for kids. I don’t think kids would appreciate it if they knew that the Mac ‘n Cheese that looked “Fun!” actually was melting their brains. Scientists, stop trying to baby-ify nature. It’s not safe. Stop doing that thing. Well, that was the list for the lesser evils of Food-Dom, and if you’re too scared to see the next list, just remember that your food is still probably as dirty on your plate as it is on the floor.
Now, for those that haven’t left, get ready to be surprised, because THIS is the REAL list. We’re starting off with a squish; do you know what Carmine is? Carmine is an ingredient obtained by doing something weird to a beetle. It’s used in Skittles, Good n’ Plenty, and some beverages such as served in a certain coffee shop named Starbucks (Until the public found out and they made it a big deal) as a food coloring. Just ridiculous.
Next up is something else that’s squishy. Shellac. It’s even worse than straight up beetles in your beverages, believe it or not. It’s basically what coats shiny stuff like jelly beans. According to Health.com “a sticky substance derived from secretions of the female Kerria lacca, an insect native to Thailand” (Secrection means ooze), which is bad enough, without pointing out that it’s hidden in the ingredients list usually as “confectioner’s glaze”. Confectioners Glaze? The confectioner probably wouldn’t touch the stuff with a ten-foot pole, even if paid.
Next up is something else that’s squishy. Shellac. It’s even worse than straight up beetles in your beverages, believe it or not. It’s basically what coats shiny stuff like jelly beans. According to Health.com “a sticky substance derived from secretions of the female Kerria lacca, an insect native to Thailand” (Secrection means ooze), which is bad enough, without pointing out that it’s hidden in the ingredients list usually as “confectioner’s glaze”. Confectioners Glaze? The confectioner probably wouldn’t touch the stuff with a ten-foot pole, even if paid.
Well, next up is “Dough Conditioner”! Often put in bread, this horrible concoction is basically what’s probably on the top of your head (Unless you’re bald) melted! It can also be made of melted duck feathers. Kind of ironic that some people feed bread to ducks. Imagine eating bread with your dead best friends feathers in it, almost every time you see a human. Horrifying, isn’t it?
Well, next up is the next-to-last ingredient for today… Herbicide! Yum! Farmers dump the stuff all over the crops, and don’t even bother cleaning it off before it makes its way to our dinner plates. Remember, kids, wash your fruits and veggies or the poison might kill you!
Well, next up is the next-to-last ingredient for today… Herbicide! Yum! Farmers dump the stuff all over the crops, and don’t even bother cleaning it off before it makes its way to our dinner plates. Remember, kids, wash your fruits and veggies or the poison might kill you!
Moving on… It’s time for the final ingredient on our list. First, let’s recap: Carmine’s ‘natural’ food coloring from beetles, Shellac is what the confectioner never got the impulse to go anywhere near, Dough Conditioner is melted hair, and Herbicide is probably never put on food labels, and now, the tasty, the glamorous… Castoreum! Do you know what that is, kids?! THAT’S RIGHT! The liquid inside scent glands right next to a beaver’s butt! Not joking, not kidding, not bluffing, not even lying. Castoreum is used as vanilla, raspberry, and strawberry flavoring, and is impossible to find, as on ingredient lists, it, along with a billion other things, is labeled simply as “natural flavoring”. Have I made you lose your lunch yet? No? I’m sure I’ll manage that in the next, scary, paragraph.
You might be thinking: Who’s allowing this? Who’s letting this to happen to my breakfast? My lunch? My dinner? Well, the answer is quite simple: The FDA. Yes, that’s right; they let food companies do this, and more, to our food. Want to know what ‘more’ might be? Well, here’s most of what ‘more’ can refer to. The FDA’s requirements on food are very loose. There could be mouse fur in your peanut butter, to start off. The FDA very demandingly forced companies to keep the mouse fur at a maximum of one rodent hair per 100 grams. If there’s more, the FDA will take care of it, but other than that, enjoy the fur! Oh, and, according to CBS News, “Food products can contain a certain amount of “foreign matter”, a term that includes cigarette butts” (August 9, 2010). Also, did you know that the FDA feels it important to add poop to food? As a result, they let that in, too. It’s too bad they don’t let us have more than 15 fruit fly eggs and 1 maggot per 100 grams of tomato sauce… a shame, also, that they don’t let us all have more bugs on our asparagus than 40 per 100 grams… and that they don’t let us have more parasites in our fish than 60 per 100 fish. The FDA doesn’t like insects, they must have made them mad at some point, because they don’t let more than 325 insect fragments (Poop, body parts) per 10 grams of ground thyme. The point to this paragraph is, the FDA isn’t here to keep our food nice and clean, it probably doesn’t care at all. We’re alone, really. If we were safer, hunters wouldn’t be hunting for a beaver’s scent gland that’s basically in its butt, and farmers might not be dumping herbicide on our plates, and there would be less bugs in our beverages, and there would definitely be more happy people.
Overall, you can see that our food is dangerous. It has tons of ingredients that disagree with what is truly safe to eat... Why does this happen? Why are they constantly forcing disgusting food down our throats? Why is it so hard to eat healthy in this world? Why?
Works Cited
Gardner, Amanda. "18 Most Sickening Food Ingredients." Health.com. Health.com, n.d. Web. 16 Dec. 2013. <http://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20588763,00.html>.
Hunter, Aina. "11 Totally Disgusting Things the FDA Allows In Your Food." CBSNews. CBS Interactive, 9 Aug. 2013. Web. 16 Dec. 2013.<http://www.cbsnews.com/news/11-totally-disgusting-things-the-fda-allows-in-your-food/>.
Zerbe, Leah. "Gross Food | The 15 Grossest Things You're Eating | Rodale News." Gross Food | The 15 Grossest Things You're Eating | Rodale News. Rodale News, n.d. Web. 16 Dec. 2013. <http://www.rodalenews.com/gross-food>.
Works Cited
Gardner, Amanda. "18 Most Sickening Food Ingredients." Health.com. Health.com, n.d. Web. 16 Dec. 2013. <http://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20588763,00.html>.
Hunter, Aina. "11 Totally Disgusting Things the FDA Allows In Your Food." CBSNews. CBS Interactive, 9 Aug. 2013. Web. 16 Dec. 2013.<http://www.cbsnews.com/news/11-totally-disgusting-things-the-fda-allows-in-your-food/>.
Zerbe, Leah. "Gross Food | The 15 Grossest Things You're Eating | Rodale News." Gross Food | The 15 Grossest Things You're Eating | Rodale News. Rodale News, n.d. Web. 16 Dec. 2013. <http://www.rodalenews.com/gross-food>.
Votes:
Sand