Many of these ingredients are banned in Europe, but here in the good old USA you’ll find them on your dinner plate.
Two years ago, the nation’s collective stomach churned when people learned they were eating a meat product called “pink slime.” Lean, finely textured beef as the industry wanted to call it, was meat scraps that were once earmarked for pet food repurposed for the human dinner table, especially the National School Lunch Program. While the product looked like human intestines, what caused the national revulsion was that pink slime was treated withpuffs of ammonia to kill the bacterium E. coli. Yum.
Soon after the hoopla began, the main supplier of pink slime, Beef Products, Inc., announced it was closing its production facilities. But since then, other products the public doesn’t know it’s consuming or want to consume have surfaced, and the manufacturers have not necessarily been as forthcoming. There’s a good chance you are eating some of the following products and byproducts.
1. Azodicarbonamide in Bread
Until a month ago, few had heard of this “dough conditioner,” intended to provide strength and improve elasticity. Like pink slime, it was azodicarbonamide’s industrial overtones that drove indignation—it’s “the same chemical used to make yoga mats, shoe soles, and other rubbery objects,” wrote food blogger Vani Hari in a successful petition to get Subway to remove the substance from its baked products.
While World Health Organization tests found azodicarbonamide risks “uncertain,” it has been linked to deaths in animals and allergic reactions in humans. Azodicarbonamide is banned in Europe and Australia and its use carries a prison sentence in Singapore, writes Hari. The Center for Science in the Public Interest warns that when azodicarbonamide is baked in bread, it produces the carcinogen urethane. While Subway announced it is “in the process of removing azodicarbonamide as part of our bread improvement efforts,” the dough conditioner is also used in food at McDonald’s, Burger King, Starbucks, Arby’s, Wendy’s, Jack in the Box and Chick-fil-A. It is also in grocery store and restaurant breads, CNN says.
2. Plastic Microbeads in Fish and Waterways
For years, the consumer products industry has given us plastic microbeads in toothpaste, liquid hand soaps, skin exfoliators, other personal care products and industrial cleaners. Products like Olay’s body wash, Dove Gentle Exfoliating Foaming Facial Cleanser and Clean & Clear Daily Pore Cleanser increase the plastic clogging the planet’s seas, “killing millions of sea creatures every year when they swallow it, choke on it, or get tangled in it and drown,” according to Slate. It was widely believed, however, that human health was spared. “Our assessment is that they will largely be removed during sewage treatment,” Jay Gooch, associate director of external relations in beauty care at Procter & Gamble, reassured Slate.
But last year the microbeads were found in water samples in three of the Great Lakes, implying that wastewater treatment is not removing them. The remaining Great Lakes have yet to be tested. The beads, which work their way up the marine food chain, “absorb and retain chemical contaminants,” says the Chicago Tribune. Some manufacturers are phasing out the beads but consumers should avoid any products that list the ingredient polyethylene.
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