"additives" news and stories

Despite urges from various British food organizations, the European Food Safety Authority decided against banning additives in food.

Their reasoning? A recent £750,000 study, which found a link between eating food loaded with additives and colorants and impulsive/hyperactive behavior in kids, was not a substantial enough reason to ban the additives entirely. In the study, eight and nine year olds who had ingested food with additives could not sit still long enough to complet simple tasks, like a 15-minute computer exercise. (Yeah, but neither could most of the eight year olds I know, with or without stimulants. Heck, most 25 year-olds I know don't have the patience to finish a 15-minute computer task).

But the study did prompt some retailers to change their ways: Marks and Spencer, a British department store that sells everything from shirts to iPods to gourmet foods, vowed to stop selling food and drink that contain additives by the end of the month.

The study results should not be ignored, but I don't blame the EU for not jumping to conclusions. Banning food with additives falls along the same lines as banning food with trans-fats, and I have the same opinion in each case: use your own good judgment and discretion. If packaged foods make your kid hyperactive, don't buy the foods, or at least limit their intake. Simple as that.

[via] Times Online

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No additives, no hormones. no chemicals... do these phrases mean what you think they mean? The Diet Detective has a little guide to help you figure out what these designations mean, and it isn't always what you think.

• No antibiotics - Some antibiotics are given to treat sick animals, and given to the whole herd when one animal is ill. The "subtheraputic" use of drugs to boost animal growth is the main concern here, and labeling usually differentiates between the two. Organic farmers cannot use any animal for organic products that has been treated with antibiotics, so they are simple separated from the herd if they must be treated.
• No chemicals - This label means nothing (or anything at all), since there is no USDA or FDA definition of the term.
• No additives - There are 2,800 potential additives for meat in the US and the labeling applies to what was added to the meat, such as colorings and flavorings - not what was fed to the animal in the first place.
• No hormones - Hormones are not allowed in the production of pork and poultry. Period. Cows can be given hormones to speed their growth, though, so if the label specifies that "No hormones [were] administered," the cow probably lived a healthy and natural life.

The Detective notes that because the regulations are in place, doesn't mean that they are always followed. In many cases, there is little in the way of follow-up to prove that all producers are living up to their labels. Many suppliers, however, do live up to the standards set by law, if not to a higher standard of their own. Labeling may not be fail-safe, but it's still more reliable than the alternatives of no labels or completely unsanctioned ones.

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Yesterday, The Fanatic Cook featured a good post with some highlights from a large-scale, bottled-water analysis done by the National Resources Defense Council a few years ago. One of the better details that TFC pulled from the report was how a bottled water called Spring Water, labeled with a majestic mountain lake, was actually sourced from an industrial parking lot next to a hazardous waste site. Fun, and probably not that uncommon. TFC also points out this handy chart with comparisons of tests run on hundreds of different bottled waters to check their levels of arsenic, fluoride, etc.

Powdered and concentrated drink mixes are nothing new, but a product called Flavor Tops packs concentrates into screw-on caps designed for bottled waters. Customers can add the mouthpieces to bottled water (assuming the tops fit the bottle) and turn their water into sports drinks, teas, or even alcoholic beverages, according to a recent press release from PR Web. Flavor Tops were developed by Innovation Fund, LLC, and have apparently been licensed to a unnamed company that will have them on the market by early 2007. Aside from soft drinks, the caps may also serve as a way of keeping vitamins and medications fresh prior to infusing them into drinks, the release said.

Brewers in Europe may soon have to provide complete lists off ingredients on their beer bottles, according to a recent BBC News story. The European Commission hopes to have reworked many labeling standards, including those for alcoholic beverages, by the end of the year. While this might not be a big deal to breweries in Germany, where beer can legally only contain water, hops (right), yeast and malted barley or wheat, plenty of other breweries use chemicals that, while safe, may sound less than appealing to consumers. Propylene glycol alginate, for example, is a chemical derived from algae, used to maintain a thicker head on a beer. Personally, I'd be glad to know a little more about what else is in my beer. I'm sure others would too.