The Paranoia about Food Additives Detracts from Legitimate Concerns

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There are times at which I wish I knew more Chemistry (than the far more than average amount that I do), and I was recently reminded of this.

People have been concerned for nearly a century (ever since the Food and Agriculture Industries turned to Chemistry in a big way in the 1900's) about the consequences of ingesting large amounts of chemical additives in food.  Recently there was a conflagration on some social media, with a post titled "Eight Foods we Eat in the U.S. that are Banned In Other Countries," which caused me some alarm as I followed the link.

Whenever a concern is raised about something--take the Global Warming phenomenon, for instance--in the electronic society we live in, the concern spreads faster than wildfire, and, unfortunately, finds resonance in people who are nervous, but who don't have the scientific background to assess the relative significance of various aspects of the concern.  So, depending on circumstances, a person could get bombarded, quite by accident, by a number of worries about food additives, which kicks them off on a Wild Google Chase.  Depending on what pops up on their search on Google (and remember, that service, which is also the Mama of this blog you're reading now, is fine-tuned to give the searcher what is likely to grab their interest from among the literally thousands of links that they could give you in response to your query) it is likely to reinforce their worry, rather than set it to rest.  Luckily for me, a blogger on In The Pipeline (?I'm not exactly sure whether he was quoted there, or whether that is where his blog lives,) responded in detail, and mostly convincingly.  You should read this, just to absorb some biology and chemistry principles, which will generally provide a context for discussions of this sort.  My crude summary of some of the issues is as follows:

A.  We eat a large variety of things daily that are poisonous in large doses.

We know this already; almost every medicine we take is typically a poison in large doses.  The word poison, which we use in a colloquial sense, can be probably given an exact meaning, but remember the toxicity of anything depends on the circumstances: the person, what else you've eaten, how much of it you've eaten.  Being a diabetic, even sugar in large doses would kill me for certain (though if I don't eat sugar for long enough, that would probably kill me, too).  Even Vitamin C can be toxic, depending on how it is delivered.  I'm betting that a huge amount of it administered intravenously continuously for a long time is going to be pretty devastating, especially if the body can't get rid of it fast enough.  (The body does indeed excrete excess Vitamin C, but how fast is fast?)

B.  Some of the things we do eat, that could be poisonous in large doses, are eaten because of their beneficial effects. 

Iron, salt, Chromium, Magnesium, Potassium, you name it.  We gotta have them.  Water.  Other things we eat TCBPILD ("that could be poisonous in large doses)" is because they're not beneficial, but are unavoidable. 

C.  Sometimes it is because it is convenient for commercial food manufacturers to put it there, and they don't care about us enough to not put it in there, like trace amounts of pesticides, which we must be concerned about.

I was also recently made aware of the fact that when non-stick pans are allowed to get overheated ---e.g., you forgot to put the food in it one it was hot--- they release some rather nasty chemicals both into the air, and into the food.  It all depends on how much overheated the pan must get before this happens, and whether the pan is safe after it has been carefully cleaned.  Generally speaking, Teflon (and its successors) is an amazingly useful material, but it can easily be abused.  If you tend to be careless when cooking, either use some other sort of cooking receptacle, or give the cooking to someone else.  (In this century we have come to regard being careless with the cookware as a god-given liberty, justified by the Bill of Rights.  That's progress, I suppose!)

Derek Lowe, who wrote the response to the Eight Foods article, did not allay my nervousness about food hormones that are routinely administered to cattle, and antibiotics that are administered to almost all farm animals not in response to diseases, but as preventatives.  Big Farms do things whose harmful effects will not be established for many years, by which time, the Big Farms are betting, they will have made enough profits to pay off any lawsuits, or just go bankrupt, with the money safely in the Cayman Islands, or wherever.  Do please check out the facts for yourself; I'm being lazy not to do it for you, but I don't think a sedentary lifestyle alone can account for some of the beefiness of some of the younger members of our society.  I'm not alone in suspecting that hormones administered to cattle have something to do with it.  Derek Lowe does address something close to this issue, but I'm not convinced.  At any rate, eating beef is not going to kill us because of an additive.  It can kill us more directly because of its essential beefiness.

Now, I agree with Derek Lowe about fears about Arsenic: it is found naturally in the environment, and we had better get used to a little more of it in the environment than we've had in the distant past, just because of how much we tend to use the stuff in various convenience materials (e.g. rat poison), and how all that tends to go in the landfill, and finally, how runoff from the Landfill will eventually end up in the water.  We just can't afford to be too upset about teensy-weensy bits of Arsenic all over the place.

But, if any of you finds yourself in a position to influence policy, here is the scary part: unlike vitamin C, as far as I know both Arsenic and Lead tend to be accumulated in the body.  Now this is not intended to send you into a panic or a coma, but prolonged exposure, even at moderately high levels, to environmental Arsenic and Lead is bad, because of the cumulative effect.  Being in a room containing lead paint for a week is probably not at all dangerous.  (Lead paint is pretty good at keeping the lead trapped in the paint matrix.)  But having lead paint in your bedroom ceiling is very worrisome indeed.  I might not be an expert on these issues, but I believe that if I have alerted you appropriately to concern about Lead in the environment, that's probably good, and if you take my remarks to mean that having enormous doses of lead paint in your environment is nothing to worry about, that was not my intention.  Just keep a sense of proportion about these dangers, and be aware of them, especially where young children are concerned.

Must we be concerned about food additives?  I think we must.  The occasional loose cannon who goes berserk on Fb only distracts from the real concerns.

Must we be concerned about Global Warming?  I think we must.  It is true that a statistical analysis of temperatures around the globe over time does not reveal a warming trend that rises above the variations that have been observed (or inferred indirectly) over geological time.  But science has indeed shown that human activity has resulted in warming, or aggravating the warming.  But that warming is smaller than warming that took place before people were on the planet!  Nevertheless, we're adding to the warming, and, to put it mildly, consequences of continued warming is going to be very uncomfortable for most of us.  It is like being on a leaky boat.  Suppose we're all bailing like mad, but the boat continues to sink, because of natural causes.  Just imagine learning about a number of folks who are actually poking little holes in the hull.  Well, they say, the boat is sinking anyway!  What harm will a few holes do?  What difference will a few extra holes make?

Some people believe that we were put on this planet to make holes in the hull, and they justify themselves by saying that the hull has been leaking for centuries.  I know it isn't a perfect analogy, but that's how it looks from where I'm sitting.

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