How Much Of What You Feed Kids Is Poison

Be careful when you’re shopping for food. When it comes to some things, you might as well be sucking on the end of an exhaust pipe.

Other countries, such as the United States, are doing much better with regard to food. It’s becoming more apparent that our legislators have neglected a key part of our lives—what we put into our bodies. Do you know what you’re eating?

While spending some time with my grandson, he had a sore throat. There’s a bug going around. Whether it’s the flu or COVID, I can’t say. But the old standby seemed to make sense. Something cold for that sore throat.

So, I offered him an “ice cream” bar. He enjoyed it. What kid wouldn’t?

When he couldn’t finish it he set it on a paper plate I put out for him. Then, he went about playing with some of his newer Christmas gifts. While I was caught up watching him and his dad play with Pokemon toys, I looked down and realized two things.

One, it had been over 30 minutes since he started playing. It’s easy to get lost in time. The second thing I noticed was that the ice cream bar he was eating hadn’t melted.

Packaging can be deceiving. What looks like an ice cream treat may or may not be an ice cream treat. That’s because we’ve come a long way in allowing companies to do whatever they want with the products we put in our bodies. We know this wasn’t because ice cream melts, loses its shape, and becomes liquid.

What other things aren’t what we think they are?

American Cheese

While the name says American Cheese, it’s not exactly cheese. If you’ve never read the packaging, this is a processed cheese product.

That means it’s made from a blend of cheese, milk fats, emulsifiers, and food colorings. It might melt on burgers and sandwiches, but American Cheese isn’t close to how cheese is typically made.

So, what’s an emulsifier? We find emulsifiers in processed foods. No big deal, right? It’s also used in cleaning agents, and personal hygiene items, and is linked to inflammatory problems, gut health problems, and cancer risks.

Sodium Nitrite and Nitrates

You don’t see it in the sandwich, but there’s a chance it’s there, particularly if you’re enjoying ham, bologna, or a good old hot dog.

Sodium Nitrate or Nitrite are preservatives. They prevent bacteria from growing in meats and fish. They also help maintain the pinkish color longer. This helps in extending shelf life.

What do you find them in? Some bacon, sausages, hotdogs, cured, canned, and packaged meats.

Be cautious! Under the right conditions, these two preservatives react with amino acids and can cause the formation of cancer-causing chemicals like Nitrosamines.

Dyes

Seriously! Even what we allow manufacturers to put in cereals isn’t safe.

Some foods you eat or have seen contain things banned in other countries. If you haven’t heard, Europe has banned the following:

1. Red dye 3-food coloring suspected of being a carcinogen
2. Titanium dioxide-food coloring that can accumulate and cause genetic damage
3. Potassium Bromate-a suspected carcinogen used to help with texture in bread and baked goods
4. Propylparaben-a preservative shown to have possible ill effects on fertility and the endocrine system

Takeaways

After seeing firsthand what an ice cream bar might look like after an extended period out of the freezer, it opened up questions about what we give to children and what we have been eating.

The FDA undoubtedly knows of the studies that led to many substances being banned in Europe, so why are they still legally used in the United States?

According to the FDA’s website, they:

1. Ensure exposure to chemicals in food is safe.

1. The FDA says manufacturers have a responsibility to minimize or prevent hazards from contaminants and ensure the safety of the chemicals they use.
2. Under the Human Foods Program, the FDA is leveraging scientific expertise across product areas and developing a more “nimble and systematic approach to evaluating chemicals in the food supply”.

We might want to start doing two things. The first is educating ourselves more on the things we put into our bodies. We obviously can’t trust that multi-billion dollar manufacturers are going to ensure what they’re doing isn’t risky to us, especially since the FDA says they have a responsibility to minimize hazards.