"preservatives" news and stories

Anyone who's cleaned out a minivan can attest that McDonald's food just...doesn't...age. A fresh-looking burger lies stiffly next to a completely rotted apple core. The fries scattered in the backseat are hard and cold, to be sure, but there's not a spot of mold on them. And it's been weeks since the kids had those Happy Meals! What gives?

There's long been speculation that this food fountain of youth is due to a massive amount of preservatives. But McDonald's maintains that their burgers, at least, are completely preservative-free.

The answer may not be quite as sinister as suspected. Although McDonald's hasn't actually fessed up to whether preservatives lurk in anything other than its burgers, there are scientific explanations for what Salon calls this "shelf life of the undead," and while they're not exactly scary, they're not exactly healthy, either. Rather than huge levels of chemicals, we're talking hefty servings of fat and salt.

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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The popular "un-cola," 7-Up, is now one hundred percent natural. Cadbury Schweppes put the beverage through a slight reformulation to remove an artificial preservative in the drink. A spokesperson for the company said that they expect sales to increase once the ad campaign publicizing the change kicks off next month, as consumers are more interested than ever in healthy products. The TV spots will show cans of 7-Up as fruits and vegetables, being picked from trees or dug from the ground, but the company will not claim that the drink has any specific health benefits.

[Image USA Today]

 

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