Monday Mission: Cut Out the Preservatives

Your mission, if you choose to accept, is to learn the names of some of the most common and dangerous preservatives and be on the watch for them in the foods you eat.

Chances are if you’re reading this blog, you don’t have a ton of products in your home with ingredients labels at all. But even if you have pared down the processed food considerably already (if you haven’t, all the better to learn the lesson today), it’s still worthwhile to know what to watch out for on things like cottage cheese, lemon juice, canned beans, and other seemingly benign food products (along with of course regular old processed foods, which can range in ingredients from acceptable to downright scary).

For example, let’s look at a major brand of cottage cheese:

cultured pasteurized skim milk, whey, food starch, salt, potato maltodextrin, calcium phosphate, artificial color, mono- and diglyercides, guar gum, xanthan gum, artificial flavor and vitamins.

Cottage cheese really only needs milk, enzymes and salt, in case you were wondering. So what is all that other stuff?

This post is sponsored by TriLight Health, a company whose natural herbal remedies don’t include preservatives…a welcome find.

Challenge Your Brain: What’s That Food?!?

(photo source)

Here’s some more label-reading practice. I was having too much fun on a big food processing company’s website and wanted to include seven choices, but my new site editor (whose job it is to make me more succinct!) said it was too many. 😉 (Longtime readers are grinning right now, right?) Anyway…

Let’s make a guessing game of it – as in, “Name that food!”

Mystery Food #1:

WHEY, MILK, MILK PROTEIN CONCENTRATE, MODIFIED FOOD STARCH, SODIUM CITRATE, MALTODEXTRIN, GELATIN (use the coupon KS10 for 10% off!), SALT, MILKFAT, SODIUM PHOSPHATE, CALCIUM PHOSPHATE, WHEY PROTEIN CONCENTRATE, SORBIC ACID AS A PRESERVATIVE, CHEESE CULTURES, OLEORESIN PAPRIKA (COLOR), ENZYMES, ANNATTO (COLOR).

Mystery Food #2:

CHICKEN BREAST, WATER, MODIFIED CORNSTARCH, CONTAINS LESS THAN 2% OF SALT, SUGAR, NATURAL ROTISSERIE SEASONING (YEAST EXTRACT, SALT, NATURAL FLAVOR), SODIUM PHOSPHATES, CARRAGEENAN, SODIUM PROPIONATE, SODIUM DIACETATE, POTASSIUM CHLORIDE, SODIUM BENZOATE, LEMON JUICE SOLIDS, SODIUM ASCORBATE, SODIUM NITRITE. COATED WITH PAPRIKA, BLACK PEPPER, GARLIC POWDER, ONION POWDER, THYME.

Mystery Food #3:

WATER, CORN SYRUP, HYDROGENATED VEGETABLE OIL* (COCONUT AND PALM KERNEL OILS), HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, LESS THAN TWO PERCENT OF SODIUM CASEINATE (FROM MILK), NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, MODIFIED FOOD STARCH, XANTHAN AND GUAR GUMS, POLYSORBATE 60, POLYSORBATE 65, SORBITAN MONOSTEARATE, SODIUM HYDROXIDE, BETA CAROTENE (COLOR)
*ADDS A NEGLIGIBLE AMOUNT OF FAT.

Mystery Food #4:

WATER, VINEGAR, SUGAR, VEGETABLE OILS (CANOLA OIL, EXTRA VIRGIN OLIVE OIL), MODIFIED FOOD STARCH, PARMESAN AND ROMANO MADE FROM COW’S MILK CHEESES (PART-SKIM MILK, CHEESE CULTURE, SALT, ENZYMES), CONTAINS LESS THAN 2% OF SEA SALT, LEMON JUICE CONCENTRATE, SPICE, NATURAL FLAVOR, ANCHOVIES, BUTTERMILK, GARLIC*, AUTOLYZED YEAST EXTRACT, PHOSPHORIC ACID, SALT, XANTHAN GUM, CITRIC ACID, ONIONS*, MOLASSES, POLYSORBATE 60, CORN SYRUP, DEFATTED SOY FLOUR, CULTURED CREAM, SOYBEAN OIL, LACTIC ACID, DISODIUM INOSINATE, DISODIUM GUANYLATE, LEMON JUICE, CARAMEL COLOR, TAMARIND, ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, SOY LECITHIN (EMULSIFIER), SOUR CREAM*, WITH POTASSIUM SORBATE AND CALCIUM DISODIUM EDTA AS PRESERVATIVES.
*DRIED.

If your belly feels a little heavy after reading all that, you’re not alone. I’m having second thoughts about whether I should have tortured you with those lists or not!

Even when it comes to all the long words, I couldn’t always tell you what’s a filler or thickener, what’s a preservative, and what is adding flavor…nor could I tell you which ones are really harmful vs. just a little weird, or somewhere in between.

It’s time to deepen our label-reading education today.

For recipes to make three of these four mystery foods and more, check out my eBook Better Than a Box! It includes 35 Remake Resources to replace the packaged goods in your pantry.

Answers to “What’s That Food?” at the end of the post.

What Ingredients are Actually Preservatives?

Although it’s obvious that food processing companies add plenty of ingredients to foods that aren’t available in your kitchen, today we’re just going to figure out which big words are preservatives specifically. I find it a bit humorous that the ingredients lists tend to explain “to preserve freshness” or “as a preservative” on some of those items, but so many other unintelligible words go without explanation.

As it turns out, food processing companies generally add preservatives for one of three main reasons:

1. antimicrobial, to inhibit the growth of bacteria, fungi, and mold
2. antioxidant, to inhibit oxidation (oxidation is the process that turns an apple brown, when cells are exposed to oxygen – in fats, it causes rancidity, and many oxidized foods become carcinogenic – the opposite of “antioxidants”)
3. to preserve color, flavor and consistent texture which could be related to numbers one and two.

Here’s a list of food preservatives you’re likely to see on ingredients lists, both in food and personal products:

• ascorbic acid
• citric acid
• sodium benzoate
• calcium propionate
• vitamin E
• BHA and BHT
• sodium nitrate
• sulfites
• TBHQ
• EDTA
• parabens
• I may have missed some…if you know of additives that are used as preservatives, please share in the comments and I can update the post!

Reading Between the Well-Preserved Lines

It’s one thing to memorize a list of words and target them while reading ingredients – but do we need to avoid all these preservatives? Let’s dig into the research.

(photo source)

First, it’s possible that artificial preservatives themselves may have a negative effect on food safety:

“A 2010 study by Swedish researchers found that when a small amount of a common preservative was added to different types of pork meat, it increased the amount of toxins produced by the bacteria in food. The toxins from food microorganisms are generally responsible for making you sick when you acquire a food-borne illness.” (source)

Experts also question the cumulative effect, on which there isn’t a very deep body of research. In other words, if we eat lots and lots of preservatives in our food, what is the effect on our health? Luckily many Americans are currently participating in this unregulated research simply by consuming vast amounts of processed foods daily. (Yes, that’s sarcasm if you don’t know me very well.)

Many preservatives have particular health risks explored in major research studies, as follows:

Here’s how the extra ingredients were explained on the front of that lemon juice bottle:

Apparently when drying fruit, Vitamin A and C are lost in some pretty serious quantities. Exposing the fruit to sulfur inhibits that loss. Lemon juice can help home-dried fruit retain its color; I wonder if it also retains nutrient loss. Considering that sodium bisulfate (see lemon juice bottle, above) is listed as a “chemical hazard” by the CDC, I’d use fresh lemon juice and skip the sulfured dried fruit when possible. I also enjoy Made in Nature brand dried apricots – there are some in my pantry now for when I need a quick snack!

Sulfites have had GRAS status from the FDA since the status was invented in the 1950s, but since it’s possible that 1 in 100 people may have severe allergic reactions to sulfites (more common in folks with asthma), labeling laws state that sulfites must be disclosed on food and drug products. They are not permitted to be used on meat, fresh produce, or foods that are a major source of Vitamin B1 since sulfites destroy it.

One source listed raisins as very high in sulfites, but I polled my readers on Facebook last week, and nobody’s raisins, organic or not, included sulfate-forming ingredients…except the golden raisins. So if your dried fruit is light in color, it’s more likely to have a sulfite problem; if it’s already dark like raisins or prunes, you may be able to get away with the conventional stuff without preservatives anyway. These organic Woodstock Farms Raisins look delicious and say they are unsulphured.

Sulfites can be listed as sulfur dioxide, sodium sulfate, sodium and potassium bisulfites, and metabisulfites. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

The Bottom Line

We’ve all heard that we should eat processed foods only if they contain five ingredients or less and that we shouldn’t eat things we can’t pronounce. Clearly the lists of ingredients I shared above break all the rules…but what if you just want some ice cream and don’t own an ice cream maker? If we understand what the ingredients are, at least we can make an informed decision or take a risk.

When it comes to preservatives, some are more dangerous than others, it seems. From now on, I’ll do my best to keep my distance from:

• nitrites and nitrates
• BHA and BHT
• sodium benzoate
• parabens (hormone disruptors)

I’ll choose not to worry about:

• vitamin E

And I’ll consider carefully but perhaps consume:

• ascorbic acid
• citric acid
• TBHQ
• calcium propionate
• sulfites

How about you? In the spirit of baby steps, what might change about your label reading or food purchasing this week?

Answers to “What’s That Food?”

1. Velveeta
2. Oscar Mayer Deli Fresh Rotisserie Seasoned 98% Fat Free Chicken Breast
3. Cool Whip Whipped Topping “Free” (actual “milk” or “cream” doesn’t show up in the first 4 ingredients of the regular version, either, only in “extra creamy.”)
4. Kraft Caesar Creamy Lite Salad Dressing