Are you keeping a vigilant eye on the number of calories you’re consuming every day? You are, since "slim and trim " is the overwhelmingly followed trend worldwide! While excess calories, trans fat and saturated fat are some of the scary things that all health-conscious individuals are following, there is still something horrendously harmful to the body that only a few are lookingot to avoid. Yes, we are talking about food additives.
What are food additives?
Have you ever tried making fruit jam or tomato ketchup at home and wondered why, even after strictly following all the directions, your concoction doesn’t taste as sublime as that available in the market? We, the answer is simple: the food item you’ve made at home is free of harmful food additives that are added to enhance flavor, color and to preserve food commercially.
If you stock your pantry with delicious processed foods, then you should worry about what’s in them! These toxic substances, known as food additives, are added to food to enhance and preserve itstexture, color, taste, and appearance.
Foods that have it
A wide variety of processed foods, beverages and condiments have food additives in them. So as a rule of thumb, aim for the whole foods minimally processed food items that’ll provide you all the nutrition you need without pumping any toxic, lab-generated chemicals into your body.
The following food additives are the scariest of all and need to be avoided whatsoever:
1. Artificial sweeteners
Do you feel self-satisfied and content while consuming artificial sweeteners thinking that you’d retain your slim and sleek figure while having this "sweetness" in your life? Well of course you do! But you have no idea what torture you put your body through by using these excessively harmful food additives.
Aspartame, commonly known as NutraSweet, is found in foods labeled as "diet" or "sugar-free." Aspartame is believed to be highly carcinogenic and causes more adverse reactions than all other food items combined. Known to erode intelligence and disrupt short-term memory, this sweetener can cause many ailments like a brain tumor, and diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
2. High fructose corn syrup
HFCS is a highly refined artificial sweetener that is extremely dangerous for your body: it increases your LDL (bad cholesterol), causes tissue damage and may even contribute in giving you diabetes.
Flavored Yoghurt, candies, bread, cereals, canned vegetables and salad dressings, almost all the processed foods have this harmful food additive.
3. Monosodium Glutamate
If you think why processed soups taste heavenly while those you make at home are horrible, then it is because of this toxic food additive. , monosodium glutamate is an amino acid present in soups, salad dressings, chips and many restaurant foods. MSG works as an excitotoxin, a substance that excites the cells to the point of damage or death. Regular consumption of this food additive can cause substantial damage to eyes and the nervous system. It also causes fatigue, depression, and obesity.
Avoid consuming processed foods so that you can keep your body safe from the damage that these despicable food additives can cause.