Additives

What a great list. Thank you for sharing it.

This is terrific!

I wonder about vitamins and minerals that get added to baked goods--thiamine, niacin, etc. why do they add them in the first place? Is this just to replace the nutrients that are destoyed during processing?

I think it's important to note that folic acid is extremely important for women planning children. Adequate folic acid before and during pregnancy drasticly reduces the incidence of neural tube defects.

Ugh, I hate additives. I'm so used to making my own food that my once-favorite shelf-stable foods now taste like chemicals. Did you see the NY Times article on Trans Fats? One Nutrigrain bar has 2.5 grams of trans fat, the same amount as three Oreos!

BTW, I tag you for the music meme!

re: vitamin enriched products

Often vitamins are added to baked goods to replace those lost in ingredient refining or processing. For example, in my article on wheat flours I mention that niacin, riboflavin, thiamin and iron are added into flours that have had the wheat germ removed. This is because the wheat germ contains many of these minerals and vitamins (but also oils that can go rancid pretty fast making the flour unfit for consumption). Also, steel grinding can produce enough heat to destroy some vitamins, so those are added to the flour.

Some baked goods contain additional vitamins, simply to have more added. Usually, these are breakfast foods or nutrient bars.

Phosphoric Acid is Most commonly found ic soda. specificly cola's.

I dont drink the stuff, but I DO use it to strip rust off of morotcycle gas tanks...

Great list!

Fabulous list. I've always avoided packaged food, and lately I'm also making a conscious effort to buy completely unprocessed food such as bleached flour and white rice.

It can be difficult at times but considering what I've read lately about how your body handles these chemicals it's not a bad idea.

The thing that I really love about carnuba wax is that it is the hardest known wax. This is probably why it is an ingredient in floor and furniture wax. I wonder how long it takes to digest!

http://www.wellnaturally.ca/ingredients/carnuba.html

Hey, you don't have this list in a document of any kind do you? I would like to use this for reference later... Only if it's not too much trouble...

MSG - I'm surprised that you didn't list some additional side effects: It causes excessive thirst, and it can give some people headaches. I can attest to those two. My friend says that his tongue tingles when he eats MSG, but that's probably a rarer allergy.

Carnauba wax - I was disturbed to see it listed in my gummy bears ingredients, knowing that I had just waxed my car with the same stuff. =)

What's with the carreegenan and guar gums in foods to "fake" that creamy texture. Especially Ice Cream.

I'm a complete fan of Breyer's All Natural ice creams.

Turkey Hill makes two kinds. Their regular ice creams tout "All Natural Flavor", but they have additives and aren't "natural". Then they have "Turkey Hill Philadelphia Style" ice cream. "Philadelphia Style" is their "All Natural" brand.

In both cases, they cost more, but they're worth it.

Ice Cream was never meant to have seaweed extracts to make it creamy. They're supposed to have cream to make it creamy! Jeesh!

re: downloadable list

I prepared two versions for download. Be aware that the list is constantly being updated, so the download will only reflect the latest version. The first link is for the Comma-Seperated Value file while the second is for the Text file.

http://www.cookingforengineers.com/ingredients/additives_body.php?csv

http://www.cookingforengineers.com/ingredients/additives_body.php?txt

Anonymous - MSG is merely a simple salt of an essential and commonplace amino acid. Tests have been run on people who claim to recieve an "MSG headache" and in not one single case has it held up as anything more than psychomatic. Its bad repution probably stems from an association with Chinese people, and an innate racism against them.

When used correctly, the use of MSG greatly cuts down on the amount of table salt used, and overall salt intake is reduced. Still it's true that overly large amounts of MSG aren't good for you, nor as immediatly noticeable as overly large amounts of table salt.

Our brains are hard-wired to believe that a small amount of glutamate will taste good, so I believe it has a legitimate place in any kitchen, and is a good accompaniment to certain lighter dishes.

As a biochemistry PhD candidate interested in food additives, I would like to add the following information on aspartame:

Aspartame is metabolically degrade in your body into phenylalanine and aspartate, two of the twenty most common amino acids that appear n nature. Although your body is no stranger to aspartate, a daily dietary infusion of aspartate can be extremely problematic. Apartate belongs to a special class of compounds that able to cross the ‘blood-brain barrier’, meaning that once it’s in your blood it can enter your brain. In your brain, aspatrate functions as a natural neurotransmitter and an excess of aspartate from dietary aspartame will over-stimulate neurons resulting in either the desensitization or death of large numbers of neurons. These effects are observed in test animals given extreamly small regular doses of aspartame (the sort of dose you would get from a daily diet cola) and are particularity problematic for the developing brains of children or infants. Additionally, aspartame can be converted partially to formaldehyde, a potent carcinogen, by the body’s metabolic enzymes. And that’s why I don’t eat anything with aspartame. Trans-fat is also an interesting topic of discussion. Needless to say, avoid it at all costs.

Here's one for the list: Sodium erythorbate

I noticed it in a can of "Potted Meat Food Product". (I bought it out of curiosity, not to eat!)

Hormel, Armour and Libby's all make that particular product.

Apparently its also good for Boiler Treatment, Drilling Fluids and Film Processing

Tim

Hmm.. Perhaps "Erythorbic acid" and "Sodium erythorbate" are the same thing.

You should look for glutamate alone; if used by itself, MSG won't show up in the ingredient list.

Also, what's the deal with transfat-free products that are made with partially hydrogenated soybean oil? How is this possible?

re: trans fat free with PHVO

This is definitely a confusing topic. Not all partially hydrogrenated vegetable oils contain trans fatty acids. But, statistically there will be some quantity of trans since the process does not provide enough control to create only cis fats. There are two cases where you can have trans fatty acid free foods that I can think of:

1. The partially hydrogenated fat is almost completely fully hydrogenated (e.g. commercial peanut butter). The label is not marked fully hydrogenated because the vegetable oil has not been guaranteed as fully hydrogenated. In the case of peanut butter, the trans fat content is so small (or not present) that modern instruments cannot detect/measure it.

2. In the United States, the Nutrition Facts label can state 0 g of trans fat if there is less than 0.5 g of trans fat per serving. If a serving is defined as a small quantity and the trans fat content falls below 0.5 g, then they don't have to report it. The downside of all this is that most people eat more than one serving of foods with small serving sizes so you could be consuming several grams of trans fat without knowing it.

Look for partially hydrogenated vegetable oil and avoid when possible. If something traditionally uses PHVO and is now claiming zero trans fat, look to see if they replaced it with fully hydrogenated vegetable oil, butter, or palm oil (sometimes called palm oil shortening), which do not contain trans fats. If they simply reorganized their label and serving size (like the last version of "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" that I saw in the store) and partially hydrogenated vegetable oil is a main ingredient, then avoid.

EU E- numbers / European food additives.

In europe, permitted food additives are "harmonised" and given numbers starting with E (e.g. E-260 for acetic acid). Foodlaw (http://www.foodlaw.rdg.ac.uk/additive.htm) has a list of E-numbers and what they mean, as well as much more information on the regulation of food additives in europe.

-rishab

For those who are afraid of MSG, get hold of a copy of Jeffery Steingarten's "It Must've Been Something I Ate" and read the chapter entitled 'Why Doesn't Everyone in China Have a Headache?'. Also take a look at the FAQ at internet-grocer.net: www.internet-grocer.net/faq.htm#1and page 5 "msg and food intolerances" in the pdf file on MSG from the International Food Information Council at
http://ific.org/publications/reviews/upload/Glutamate-and-Monosodium-Glutamate.pdf
While I would never recommend that anyone eat a whole container of MSG all at once, the only ones who should be concerned about MSG consumption are those who are allergic to gluten. But that is only because MSG is sometimes derived from wheat. And now I read that the Canadian celiac association is saying that MSG is safe because it is now generally derived from sugar beets.

By local minister, Pat Martin, proposed a law that would make it illegal for any business to produce or sell trans-fat for consumption. This law has recently been passed by Ottawa and will apply not only to grocery stores but also to restaurants. There is a one year grace period, but by this time next year, Canadians should be able to eat in relative safety. It’s defiantly a fringe benefit of public health care that because the government foots the bill, they tend to enact more laws that protect public safety.

-Aaron

MSG

> Its bad repution probably stems from an association with Chinese people, and an innate racism against them.

I'm Chinese. All the people that have told me that MSG is not good for you, and that you can get headaches from MSG were Chinese people. So it's not like European Americans are the only ones against MSG.

> Tests have been run on people who claim to recieve an "MSG headache" and in not one single case has it held up as anything more than psychomatic.

Well, if someone knows in advance that some good has MSG, then claims a headache, that's a weak case. But if you don't know ahead of time and whenever you get a headache after eating, then find out MSG was an ingredient, I would believe that. Personally, once I got a bag of Ranch Corn Nuts, devoured the bag, and immediately got a headache and even nausea. I checked the ingredients, and there was MSG pretty high on the list. While this was not a scientific experiment, I believe that the headache was due to the high MSG content consumed rapidly. Can you suggest something else in the ingredients that may have caused it?

Tests can be fallible when they are not designed correctly, or make wrong assumptions. The Mayo Clinic seems to agree about MSG headaches:
http://www.mayoclinic.com/invoke.cfm?objectid=ABADB830-211F-4F16-BABCD37DB121C90A
Here's a site that lists MSG studies (both positive and negative).
http://diet-studies.com/msg.html

> Why Doesn't Everyone in China Have a Headache

I haven't read the book, but to respond to that statement, Chinese people don't cook with MSG at home. And if they do, it's in small quantities.

>Personally, once I got a bag of Ranch Corn Nuts, devoured the bag, and immediately got a headache and even nausea. I checked the ingredients, and there was MSG pretty high on the list.

This is hardly proof that MSG was the cause of the headache and nausea. What other things are in the list of ingredients? Was this bag of ranch corn nuts devoured on an empty stomach? Was it accompanied by any liquids? Other starches? How much salt was consumed?

(I'm not familiar with "ranch corn nuts" and after googling do not readily find a list of ingredients) I'd wager that there could have been several reasons for nausea after "devouring the bag" - what size was the bag? In my experience, corn is not that easily digested anyway. Or it could be that the headache and nausea was induced by being dehydrated. Is there a significant amount of salt in ranch corn nuts (my guess is yes).

Obviously, if a person quickly consumes huge quantities of even the safest food, there is risk of nausea and/or headache.

Again, I'm not implying that one should use MSG indiscriminately, but a small amount will probably not cause much harm.

This is a great website, and it's so cool that it's from a fellow Cal EECS alum! I'm hoping that it will give me inspiration to start cooking some more.

One Of my Friends told me about stevia. Its a sweetener that comes from a plant, and the FDA has baned it yet its very popular in Japan.

http://www.stevia.net/

Great List
-Mike

One of my friends buys stevia at the Healthfood store (Canada) and uses it to sweeten her coffee.

Mike, after looking at www.stevia.net, it appears that stevia is available in USA in healthfood stores but only if it's labelled as a "dietary supplement" and cannot be referred to as sweet or a sweetener.

This "About" article is rather interesting:
TOXIC OR TASTY: The Real Issue in the Stevia Battles (http://healing.about.com/cs/uc_directory/a/uc_stevia_jones.htm)

MSG's gotten a little bit of a bum rap. I myself was against it for a long time assuming it was a manmade chemical. Turns out I was way off. MSG is a natural compound found in seaweed and the ingredient is derived from said plant. This is one of the reasons it's a dominante flavor many Asian cuisines. Some people are allergic to MSG, this can cause people problems though it would vary from person to person like any allergy. An interesting thing to note is that MSG is considered a taste in and of itself (along with Sweet, Salty, Sour, etc) in Japan.

MSG is not considered a separate taste, exactly. It is part of "umami", which is supposedly best described as the fullness one experiences in cheese, meat, soup broth, etc. It is said to indicate the presence of amino acids/glutamate/aspartates.

Also, MSG is not derived from seaweed anymore, although that was the original source. It is produced by fermenting molasses or starch hydrolyzate into l-glutamic acid, which is then neutralized with sodium hydroxide. Before this, wheat gluten was used, which contains upwards of 25% MSG by weight.

1) Umami is considered a specific flavor. There is much evidence to support that human tongues have receptors for Glutamate.

Rather than cook with MSG, celery is a good source of it-- that's why Celery tastes like water but makes food much tasty.

2) Nobody is allergic to "aspartame" per se, it's a sensitivity to phenylaline. Those that have this condition are required to be vegetarians (as meat contains it as well). I think Aspartame has a far worse reputation than it deserves, but I'm still a sucrose man, myself.

3) Chocolate doesn't contain caffeine (unless added). Chocolate contains a compound called Theobromine, which indeed is related to caffeine.

Theobromine's properties are much more positive in my opinion, it's processed much slower, it's a mood enhancer, and its stimulant properties are much more relaxed. And dogs can't handle it so don't give your dog chocolate.

4) Lecithin is found in chocolate and considered to be very healthy. Turmeric (Curcumin) also has healthy properties.

I find it impressive (and frightening) how many food colorings are derived from petroleum!

On lecithin: Also found in egg yolks; it's the phospholipid that makes eggs such great emulsifiers.

On MSG #1: Although most people aren't particularly sensitive to it in normal-to-moderate doses, there are some people who are especially sensitive to glutamates in general.

On MSG #2: The glutamate sensitive should also keep their eyes on ingredients for "hydrolyzed vegetable protein" or similar phrases. Hydrolysis is the process that breaks proteins down into their component amino acids, and some glutamate will invariably be released in the process. (P)HVP's will usually be used as a way to add glutamate and the corresponding umami taste to a product.

>Personally, once I got a bag of Ranch Corn Nuts, devoured the bag, and immediately got a headache and even nausea. I checked the ingredients, and there was MSG pretty high on the list.

I always get a headache when I eat 'ranch' flavoured anything and I don't think it has anything to do with MSG (in fact I suspect that it is psychological) but some flavouring in it does not agree with me. If I think its psychological does that rule it out...?

I often get a headachy feeling when I eat yellow, green or orange candy. I can't figure out if it's the colouring or the flavouring. I only have trouble with certain candies, and never with pop or other processed foods. It's always the gummy chewy sticks to you teeth transparent candies, like sour keys. Red candy I never have a problem with.


I don't see what's wrong with having seaweed in ice-cream. It's not like iced is a natural state for the cream anyway.

3) Chocolate doesn't contain caffeine (unless added). Chocolate contains a compound called Theobromine, which indeed is related to caffeine.

I am curious to know more about this... I personally have an allergic reaction to caffeine. (This is document by several different doctors- not something I self diagnosed.)

I have always been told that the caffeine in chocolate comes from the coca bean used to make the chocolate. I always check for coca bean or coca butter prior to purchasing a product. Needless to say- I don't eat much chocolate since almost all chocolate items contain one of these ingredents. I have found some white chocolate that does not contain either of these, but it is a rare find.

re: cocoa and caffeine

Almost all chocolate has caffeine added. The question I'm wondering is whether or not cocoa naturally has caffeine. My sources say yes - about one tenth of the amount of theobromine, but nonetheless it does have caffeine. Now a number of internet websites claim there is no caffeine in processed cocoa (unless added), and some even cite scientific papers which I have been unable to find. In short, I don't know if cocoa has caffiene, but every piece of printed literature I've been able to find says "yes" and there are more than a handful of websites that say "no, it's another food myth".

I'm not a doctor or chemist, however, I would say that it would be worthwhile to consume a decent amount of chocolate at some point and find out if you actually do have a sensitivity to it the same way you get with caffeine.

I do apologize for my mistake, apparently cocoa does contain small amounts of caffeine, 17mg per liter, which is the same as a cup of decaf tea, and less than 1% that of espresso.

If caffeine is added to chocolate, I would imagine that it would have to be labelled as such.

Wow, I gotta say, this is a really nice complete list of all the stuff that we put in our body.

Thanks for sharing it with us.

I must respectfully disagree that "all chocolate has caffeine added". Caffeine is a drug, however common it may be, and you are suggesting that it may legally be added to a food but omitted* from the list of ingredients?

I believe I might have used the wrong words in my last comment. As a base ingredient, most common chocolate contains caffeine. I don't know if it's been added or it's naturally there - but it's there...

Actually, caffeine can be added to an ingredient and not be listed as an additive - if the supplier of the ingredient that normally naturally contains caffeine bumps up the level of it and it is then sold to the manufacturer.

And did you know that caffeine helps minimize and reduce the incidence of cancer? Caffeine is not the horrible culprit that many deem it to be - in the amounts that people drink it in coffee at several huge cups per day, yes it can cause jitters, anxiety, etc. In someone like myself, even in small amounts it can do the same. But caffeine itself actually has some amazing health benefits so having in your product - particularly naturally ocurring and in small amounts - is not necessarily a bad thing. Just make sure you don;t add milk to your coffee or tea - milk proteins bind with the polyphenols (other natural compounds in coffee and tea) that have health and anicancer benefits. So some coffee each day is not a bad thing!

It seems here there is some nit picking about "additives". Guar gum and natural thickeners, such as agar, are commonly used in cooking around the world and are very natural. They are ingredients, or natural "additives" not nasty negative "additives". Some actually have health promoting properties such as burdock root. Their use does not mean that a manufacturer is "skimping' on quality items at all - it means that that is what they used in their recipe to create whatever texture, thickness, viscosity, they wanted to - or it can be used to hold things together in solid forms.

Question for someone familiar with Japanese regulations: WHat is acceptable in Japan for use as a release agent or lubricant in candies or tablets other than magnesium stearate (a natural vegetable fatty acid)?

Much obliged!

P.S> MSG makes me sick, plain and simple.

A big part of the reason MSG is associated with Chinese food (and Asian food in general) is because it's found naturally in soy (and seaweed, as a few other people have mentioned) and also because it was common for Chinese resturants in the US put extra MSG in their food to help bloster the taste of low quality (read: cheap) ingredients. Headaches and nausea caused by MSG are sometimes called 'Chinese Resturant Syndrome.' But really, a lot of cheap foodstuffs have MSG added to them to make the customer think that what they're eating is higher quality than it really is. I've seen many Chinese resturants in my area advertising 'No MSG' in their food to help calm additive-conscious customers.

I agree with Dragnore, there is a distinct flavor that MSG gives to food that can be picked out, although I've never gotten ill from it. I try to avoid foods with MSG added in addition to what's naturally in some foods simply because I don't like unnecessary chemicals in what I'm eating, but it's not the end of the world since it doesn't make me ill.

...

Perhaps MSG deserves it's own article?

Without reviewing my biochem, and that's my background, I believe that it is sloppiness in descriptions that accounts for people claiming the presence of caffeine in chocolate, when in fact, it is theobromine. Theobromine is an analog of caffeine, an analog simply meaning that the chemical or molecular structure is very nearly, but importantly, not, identical to caffeine. So, it can have similar, but not identical side effects on a person. Same as theophyline in tea. People claim caffeine in tea, but theophyline is an analog of caffeine. Anyway, my disclaimer is that I didn't have time to look up to refresh my memory, but, as an ex-professional scientist, I've seen a lot of general sloppiness that causes people to believe something erroneous. Some science mags or sources figure the masses don't need to know the accurate details, so they talk "down" to the masses. However, that being said, there could, indeed, be small amounts of caffeine in chocolate and tea, as well as the analogs I've mentioned. Just not time to research it at the moment.

I found this wonderful book at goodwill that explains all these,and I guess you can also buy the book on amazon if you're lucky, but anyone who is truly curious about what's in our food, I would highly recommend this book:Our poisoned earth and sky (Preliminary task force report)
It's old but still very relevant, and it really opens your mind to the fact that nothing you eat anymore is without poison unless you grew it yourself in virgin soil, probably in a greenhouse. Not gonna sell my book though. :)

I became interested in BHT since I read in the book mentioned previous about what BHT stands for, the T is for tolouene which is also a component of the car paint we sell at my job and that stuff is soooo noxious! I found this site about the properties of BHT and it's really frightening! This stuff is commonly found in gum and hotdogs, and other preserved meat products. They actually call it an Anti-Oxidant! I am getting a little confused lately about antioxidants, cuz some of them are purely lethal, apparently. http://www.inchem.org/documents/icsc/icsc/eics0841.htm
Bht is derived from coal tars which are known to have carcinogenic effects
It would be lovely if they would just sell fresh food in its natural color and leave all this preservative CRAP out of it. It's ridiculous how much undigestible chemicals go into almost all food.

It's also important and interesting to note that synthetic folic acid that is added to foods to increase their folate content and also to multivitamins or supplements is much better absorbed by the body than forms of naturally occuring folate. It's one of the few vitamins whose synthetic form is more absorbable than the naturally occuring form. PS I have a degree in human nutrition from the University of Florida, I promise I'm not making this up! :)

Reading through the comments, I noticed several mentioned that seaweed extract should not be added to ice cream to make it more creamy. Those extracts are not necessarily added to make ice cream more creamy, but to keep ice crystal size small as the ice cream sits in you self-defrosting freezer. Don't get me wrong-I do like Bryers-but ice cream without those extracts get icy very quickly in the freezer. So unless you plan on eating all the ice cream in a short amount of time, don't be afraid of buying ice cream with a bit of seaweed in it. Cream doesn't give the creamy texture, the small ice crystals do.

I've been into reading food labels for a while now, but got stymied when we moved to Australia from the US. Down here they are required to use codes from a lookup table rather than actual ingredients, so it might look something like this: (exerpt from my bread)

vegetable emulsifier(471, 322), food acid( 260), mineral (170), flour treatment agent (300), preservative (202).

This is ridiculous because you actually have no idea what is in your food anymore. The list is made available on a governmental website, but really who is going to carry around a list of 1500 items when they do their shopping? It seems like a total food industry scam to me.
Anyway, maybe you should file this under 'misplaced rant'.
-Stephane

I noticed the iron entry says that there are no side effects for iron as a food additive and then looks like it has an asterisk, but I can't find a footnote for it on the page. I thought you might add in the table that overdosing on iron supplements is a major cause of fatal poisoning in children. It's such a harmless seeming thing that it's good to be aware of this.

I notice that your list does not have alumimum phosphate or any alumimum additives (i.e baking powder component). Does alumimum in the diet contribute or cause Alzheimer's ? I dont know, although I do know that there it concerns me that it might, and after seeing several family members go through Alzheimer's it bothers me that it is in a number of foods still.

For example almost all of those frozen pizzas and some frozen foods have it.
sometimes tortillas do and many pre-mixed baking mixes still have it.

I was just surpirxed not to see it one your list...

Jeremy:

Rumford baking powder is one of the few that is aluminum free. Works great.

http://www.rumfordworld.com/htdocs/products.htm

I rarely ever use baking powder, but aluminum is still used in some, although not as much as it used to be. Right now I have an aluminum and phosphate free backing powder with only calcum carbonate and citric acid, not that phosphates are really that bad, I think they are hard on the kidneys maybe?

my favorite thing was to make pancakes with baking soda and sour/butter milk (mild with a table spoon of vingar) it works great and I thought they tasted great without the aftertaste of baking powder, maybe it didnt make a diference i dunno.

Jeremy

Thanks Michael,
For opening up this topic.
As someone who finds cooking relaxing, I generally don't eat pre-prepared foods (except, of course Cheetos for breakfast), both because of a suspicion of additives, but also because of an objection to the "sameness" of mass produced foodstuffs. I can make a pound of beans in a pressure cooker for about .89 cents or I can buy a can of beans for about the same price.
I rarely buy the can because I like the variability of my own cooking. And I know what has gone in to it.
(Except that the pressure cooker is aluminum, and who knows what the dried beans have been treated with to prevent pests and mold, oh well...)
I know a lot of people who distain cooking because they consider it a distraction, or they just don't have the time.
I treasure distraction...Sometimes just standing in the kitchen on a sunny afternoon chopping veggies feels good. I always find that ordinary tasks open up the mind, my best solutions usually come when I am doing dishes, riding on the bus, anything except staring at a piece of paper (or computer screen)

A note about artificial low carb sugar /sweetener. This came up as a tangent in my conservation biology class a while ago. The low carb sweeteners are a modified form of sugar. As it is almost sugar, it retains the sweet taste. However, the body recognizes it as a toxin so it does not metabolize it. Most of it passes through your system, but a small amount (something like 5-15%, I cant remember exactly) accumulates in your body. I don't know of evidence saying this is harmful, but your body thinks it is toxic.... Not to mention the completely unknown environmental consequences of this now common ingredient.

I saw artifical colors listed on the side of carton of my Fat Free Half n' Half. I wrote them to find out what these colors where...and they said it was proprietory, and that they did not have to tell me. I have heard some horror stories about users of non-dairly creamers having long strands of ropey gunk scraped out of their arteries...

The list of additives does not load on my computer (using firefox, tried IE as well). Help?

It's not working right now. Apparently, it was one of the pages that died when I moved servers and changed out most of my code. I discovered this last week, so it's on my list of things to fix. Sorry for the inconvenience.

:) No rush, thanks for the reply!

I recently read an artical about Carbon Monoxide gas used in meat packaging to make older meat look bright red longer. (One of the Wal___'s, I can't remember whether Walmart or Walgreens had agreed to stop doing it. The article was in Treehugger)
That's the kind of thing that really alarms me, because stuff like that isn't listed as an "ingredient".

Should they not also list nitrogen, oxygen, argon, carbon dioxide and water vapor??

Is there an unhealthy byproduct produced by carbon monoxide treatment? Or if not completely dissipated, is there a adverse health impact due to the presence of carbon monoxide in my packaged meat?

I don't think there is an adverse health effect from the CO itself. I think the main objection is that the meat is in effect dyed (not technically so, but the effect is the same) It's like buying fruits and veggies that have been gassed to look ripe, but haven't really developed the sugars by ripening. So you think you are getting super fresh meat, but you are not.
I don't know if the other things you listed are used to process foods. Argon? Is that used to purge oxygen in packaging? (I know it is used in industrial furnaces.)
I do know that some of the processes used to package, preserve and ship foods do so at the expense of flavor (and sometimes to benefit it). Like the wet processing of scallops, really ruins the flavor. The benefit to the seller is that the scallops hold more water. The downside for the buyer is they are paying for water, and for a nasty tasting additive.

Actually, Thor opened up a subject that has always held great interest to me, not really from a health or tastiness concern, but out of curiousity. (well, a little from a tastiness concern.)
How is food processed? I'm not talking so much about prepared food, but of simple produce, flour, meats, fish, dairy.
I love to take factory tours. One summer many years ago I was doing a community cable show, and one of our (unfinished, as far as I know) projects was to go to a local apple orchard, and follow the process of tending the orchards, harvesting, processing and storing. There was a lot to it. I believe they too used CO, though I'm not sure, some gas, to remove oxygen during storage to slow down ripening. The fruit was held in just above freezing coolers and the oxygen was removed. Big, serious signs warned the workers that death would occur within 5 minutes if they stayed in the coolers once the oxygen was removed.
It was really fascinating.
I'd love to hear from anyone experienced in the food industry about what happens in between the field and the grocery store. And what professional food people think about it.

Where is this list? All I can find is the comments about ingredients on the list. Please post a link to the additve list. Thank you.

For some reason I can't see the list, the rest of the page is blank. I don't think it is my computer, because I have been browsing your site all evening. But I doubt it is the site, for other people seem to have been able to read it. Is it in invisible cyberink?

No, I'm sorry - there's a bug that's causing the additives list to not load. I've got it on my list of bugs to fix. Sorry for everyone who arrived hoping to see the list! I'll get it fixed soon!

I use sodium acid pyrophosphate, available in home size containers as "Bakewell Cream", as a leavener; both the regular and the starch free versions can be ordered on the Internet.

In behavior this product is in between cream of tartar-baking soda mixes (formerly marketed pre-combined as "single acting baking powder") and double acting baking powders.

My thoughts are very positive regarding the safety of foods produced here in the United States. One thing that irks me is that processed food has been so safe for so long that the education system in this country abandoned the once traditional junior high and high school life skills courses that covered such subjects as safe food preparation. This has lead to people under cooking ground beef or drinking unpasteurized milk and juices because they are completely unaware of the very real risks involved.

Not all processing involves exotic additives or esoteric processes. Much of it is simple freezing or retort canning.

In short, food processing in effect "idiot proofed" most common dietary items, and the knowledge of food risks and food borne illnesses and their prevention seems to have been lost.

This list is still missing. Do you know when it will be back up and running. Or can I get an email copy of it.

letsgo.sens@gmail.com

Thanks

Got it working again. Thanks for being patient.

Calcium Disodium EDTA and Lactic Acid can both cause an allergic reaction in sensitive individuals. I react strongly to either one and they should be avoided by anyone with a milk allergy. Pretty much anything with any part of the words Lactic, Calcium(some are safe, derived from oranges or minerals), or Casien is on my avoid list.

When buying food I always look carefully at ingriedients list on packages.
I installed an application on my iPhone which gives me detailed information on each additive: origin, usage, danger, side effects, ...

There are many applications for iPhone around but I chose this one because it allows for the definitio of a user profile based on some personal characteristics, lifestyle and health conditions.
Then it highlights the additives that are considered critical for the user's profile.
The name of the application is [u:c40c270587]Personal Food Additives[/u:c40c270587].
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/personal-food-additives/id403669239?mt=8

Has anybody experienced other applications?

You might want to add that Annatto is the traditional colouring agent for orange (as opposed to white) cheddar cheese. (And therefore extremely commonly encountered, I suppose)