Welcome back horror hounds!
Last week you no doubt experienced a jaw dropping, mind altering experience when you discovered what the FDA allows in your food. Unfortunately it only gets worse. I apologize if any of you lost your lunch during the process, but once you've open Pandora's box you can never be prepared for what's to come. In today's post we will discover the vile ingredients that companies actually use to make their product. This jaw dropping information may cause you to collapse so it is advised that you read this with someone near by, however the last person to read this went insane and took an ax ..well, perhaps we'll leave that story for another time. Now, let us open the vault of terror once again and see what you may have just eaten.
Ah, the beaver. Natures lumberjack as they call him. What is a cute creature such as this doing here? Surely you don't eat many beavers, or do you? The next time you eat or drink a raspberry or strawberry flavored product look on the ingredients list and see if castoreum is there. Chances are you won't find it because the FDA allows companies to label it as "natural flavoring". The gross thing is castoreum is derived from the beaver's castor sacs. That's right, internal body parts of this cute beaver are squeezed and used for flavoring. Not grossed out yet? Well, the castor sacs are used in conjunction with the beaver's urine, to heighten it's scent when marking territories. Yummy!
You might think this little guy fits into the previous post. This is the Carmine beetle and it just so happens to share the name of a color by the same name, which is a ruby reddish pigment. Here comes the fun part. You take a whole bunch of these little guys, mash them up and then add them to products such as yogurts and dark red drinks. Look on the back of ingredients and you'll see carmine listed, because it is deemed a natural coloring, but notice they didn't label the coloring as cochineal, or the entomological name for this bug. I suppose people may turn a product down if bugs were listed as an ingredient, but in the land of the FDA tomato, tomahto I guess.
This has to be a typo, right? Yoga mats? Absurd. Azodicarbonamide is an agent used in foam plastics to form the final product. It also happens to be used as a flour bleaching agent in breads, bagels and doughnuts. Generally the lower on the totem pole breads, generally fast food buns, are subject to the use of the product, but it's popping up more and more in breads on the shelves of the grocery store. The next time you go to your yoga class, perhaps you could unroll a mat that has hamburger designs all over it, it would then serve as a multi-tasker.
You are not seeing a mirage. You are indeed seeing a desert, sand more specifically. Have you ever been to the beach and gotten sand on your clothes only to never be rid of it? It always seems to pop up somewhere a week later in your shoes or in the car, but you probably didn't see it in your food. Silicon Dioxide, sand or quartz as it is known in it's common name, is found naturally in foods in trace amounts and is used in the body but, food companies, specifically fast food chains, are using excess amounts as an anti-caking agent. Although not as gross as the few above and since we already ingest it in small amount, this one may not seem quite as bad, but the next time you grab a chili from that red haired woman's food joint, just imagine an extra handful of sand tossed into your bowl.
A duck and human hair. Interesting combination We all hate finding a hair in our food and I'm sure finding a feather in your dinner may be an unpleasant experience. The best way to not to find these in your food is to hide them in plain sight. L-Cysteine is a non-essential amino acid that is produced in the body naturally and aids is healthy hair formation. The thing is since hair and feathers contain high amounts of this amino acid and is easily obtained, many companies can grind them up and add them into breads as conditioners to add shelf life. Since the hair and feathers are water soluble, they break down in the body in their natural form of the L-cysteine. You hate finding hair in your food? Well, chances are you've willing eaten your fair share of them and the kicker is, it was an ingredient.
Timber! You may yell that when you chop a tree down, but who would have thought it fell right into you next meal? Cellulose, or wood pulp as it is often derived from in the food industry. Cellulose is the most common organic compound on earth and when getting it from plants most of us don't think much of it, but when I look into a lumber yard and get the visions of shredded cheese, chocolate milk and salad dressing just to name a few, I feel a little odd. Cellulose is often used to prevent clumping in products, which may be from plants, but wood pulp is so much easier to get and prepare and thus is the most common these days. If you see imitation vanilla or vanilla flavoring there's also a good chance it came from wood pulp as well (not cellulose, but many wood products offer vanilla flavorings, which is used to imitate the real thing)
Strangely enough, I love the smell of fresh black top when the construction guys are laying it down on the road. I do not like eating it though. Coal Tar can be turned into the coloring Allura Red AC and is used in red candies, sodas and other sweets. It is listed as number 1999 on the "United Nation Dangerous Goods" list, but it's still in our food products. (
coal tar UN list). No need for a joke here, this is pretty creepy in itself.
The next time your are going to make a meal, perhaps you should pass the grocery store and head to Petsmart and Lowes for the final ingredients. As you see our foods are becoming more and more the stuff of horror and sci-fi movies. If, in the future you begin to turn into a mutated version of yourself, you may have to lay off the coal tar. It has been my pleasure to bring you these past posts in hope of jolting you out of your skin. I trust you haven't gone off the deep end like a certain ax wielding mad man, although they have never found his whereabouts. Be sure to have a safe and happy Halloween! As for myself, because of these posts, the authorities have decided to ship me to Texas for a week so I may visit the insane asylum known as my two brothers' house. Fear not, I will return with a new blog in November. Be seeing you my ghoulish fiends!
"A Hobby Should Pass the Time, Not Fill It" - Norman Bates "Psycho" (1960)
*I am not a registered nutritionist or dietitian. The information presented is for education purposes only.
Like Regenesis On Faceboook
Regenesis LLC Homepage
