What's In Those Chicken McNuggets You Feed Your Kids?

Did you know that McDonald's Chicken McNuggets are less than 50% chicken?

They are 56% corn, from corn starch, partially hydrogenated corn oil, numerous food additives derived from corn and the chicken being fed corn.

But that's not all.

There are other syntheric ingredients derived from petroleum in Chicken McNuggets to keep them fresh ... like sodium aluminum phosphate, mono-calcium phosphate and sodium acid pyrophosphate.

In addition, "there are "anti-foaming agents" like dimethylpolysiloxane, added to the cooking oil to keep the starches from binding to air molecules." This chemical "is a suspected carcinogen and an established mutagen, tumorigen, and reproductive effector; it's also flammable."

"But perhaps the most alarming ingredient in a Chicken McNugget is tertiary butylhydroquinone, or TBHQ, an antioxidant derived from petroleum that is either sprayed directly on the nugget or the inside of the box it comes in to "help preserve freshness." According to A Consumer's Dictionary of Food Additives, TBHQ is a form of butane (i.e. lighter fluid) the FDA allows processors to use sparingly in our food: It can comprise no more than 0.02 percent of the oil in a nugget. Which is probably just as well, considering that ingesting a single gram of TBHQ can cause "nausea, vomiting, ringing in the ears, delirium, a sense of suffocation, and collapse." Ingesting five grams of TBHQ can kill."

Now the next time you think about stopping at McDonald's for Chicken McNuggets or any of their other highly processed and preserved chemical concoctions, ask yourself ... "Is this what I really want to feed my kids?"

Just imagine what these chemicals are doing to yours and their health.

Read more.

Learn more about healthy food and healthy cooking.

Answer to ... What do gluten and MSG have in common?

They're found in some of the same ingredients like

hydrolyzed wheat protein
stearyldimoniumhydroxypropyl (hydrolyzed wheat protein)
hydroxypropyltrimonium (hydrolyzed wheat protein)
hydrolyzed malt extract
hydrolyzed vegetable protein
maltodextrin (can be from barley)

These ingredients can be found in food as well as cosmetics and personal care products. So they can be enter your body either when you eat food containing these chemicals or when you apply products to your skin that contain them.

Guten and MSG

Question: What do gluten and MSG have in common?

Leave your thoughts in the comments.

I'll post the answer later this week.

The Truth About Artificial Sweeteners

You've probably heard that artificial sweeteners will help you lose weight. After all, when you consume diet beverages and foods, you're eating fewer calories, so that must be true, right?

Wrong!

With the glut of diet foods on the market and the volumes being sold, if they worked, you'd expect that the majority of people would be slim and trim.

However, the opposite is true. Nearly 70% of the population is overweight or obese, and the figure is growing every year. The rate of obesity is even increasing with children.

So, now that you know that artificial sweeteners don't help you lose weight, let's look at some of the popular sugar substitutes and see why they're not a healthy choice.

The manufacturers and the FDA say they're safe. But, let's take a look at the facts.

Aspartame, also known as NutraSweet and Equal, can cause a wide variety of symptoms from headaches, difficulty breathing, speech impairment, chest pain, dizziness, memory loss to seizures, blindness and death. These are just a few of the 92 documented reactions to aspartame.

The symptoms caused by aspartame can mimic the symptoms present in various diseases. Therefore, people suffering from aspartame poisoning can be misdiagnosed with a disease, such as Alzheimer's, epilepsy, severe depression, chronic fatigue syndrome, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's to name just a few.

Acesulfame-K, or acesulfame-potassium, in some studies has caused cancer in lab animals. It has not been fully tested for safety.

Saccharin, in the past, was listed as a carcinogen. However, due to industry pressure, it was delisted and said to be safe. Yet, there are still scientists who consider saccharin to be a carcinogen.

Sucralose or Splenda is chlorinated sugar. Contrary to manufacturer claims, it is partially absorbed by the body, up to 40% according to the Japanese Food Sanitation Council. Splenda has been shown to shrink the thymus gland, enlarge the liver and kidneys, cause miscarriages and diarrhea in animal studies. It contains small amounts of dangerous contaminants, like heavy metals, methanol and arsenic. Splenda has not been adequately studied for safety. No studies have been done on children or pregnant women.

These are the worst of the artificial sweeteners on the market. But that doesn't mean the others are safe.

Your best choices for sweetening your foods and beverages are organic whole cane sugar, organic maple syrup, raw organic tupelo honey and stevia.

Learn more about food additives.

Find out the real secret to losing weight.

What Are FD&C Colors?

Have you ever looked at the ingredients in a packaged food you bought and seen that it contained FD&C colors, like FD&C Red No. 40 or FD&C Yellow No. 5? Did you ever wonder what FD&C means and where the colors come from?

FD&C stands for Food, Drugs & Cosmetics. These colors are approved by the FDA to be used in Food, Drugs & Cosmetics. They are artificial colors. Most are derived from coal tar, a petrochemical which is known to cause cancer.

Now, while the FD&C colors themselves may not be "known" to cause cancer, many are potential carcinogens or may be contaminated with cancer-causing chemicals.

FD&C Colors are certified by the FDA to not contain more than 10 parts per million (ppm) of lead and arsenic, both of which are poisonous to the human body. The FDA does not address any other harmful effects these colors may have on human health.

Sometimes you will just see ingredients like Red 40 or Yellow No. 5. They're still FD&C colors. Any time you see a color with a number on a food package, it's an FD&C color.

These artificial colors can contribute to hyperactivity in children. They may also contribute to learning and visual disorders and nerve damage.

Coal tar is not a food and was never meant to be consumed by humans, and like most food additives, has never been proven safe.

Learn more about food additives and get free tips here.

Will the Real Antioxidant Please Stand Up!

Everywhere you turn these days, you read or hear about how antioxidants are supposed to be good for your health. But there's a difference between real food antioxidants and chemical antioxidants.

The chemical antioxidants in processed foods are designed to preserve and give a long shelf life to the chemical concoctions in the package, NOT preserve your health! The antioxidants used to keep packaged foods from spoiling are not the healthy antioxidants you get from eating real whole food.

Learn more in the article, Fake Antioxidants - Don't Be Fooled!

For more information on how to determine which ingredients in your food are safe and which are not, click here.

Which Label Do You Read?

When you're looking for healthy packaged food products, it makes a difference which label you read. Each package has 3 labels that you can read:

• the front of the package
• the nutrition facts
• the ingredients list

Which of these 3 is the most important?

Manufacturers want you to read the front of the package. That's where they tell you what they want you to believe about the contents of the box, bottle or jar. Processed food manufacturers often lie about the healthfulness of what's in the food packages they produce. This  is the last place you should look.

Many organizations that give out healthy eating information say that you should read the nutrition facts. They stress the importance of eating foods low in sodium and saturated fats. But this is not the most important thing for you to know about a packaged food before you decide to buy it.

The first place you should look when you pick up a packaged food is the ingredients list. This is the last place that the manufacturers want you to look. They don't want you to know about the harmful chemicals they put in your food to give it a better taste, texture or a longer shelf life. In many cases, they make it hard for you to even see the ingredients list. The print is so tiny and in a color that blends in with the packaging that it's hard to make it out without a powerful magnifying glass. Get in the habit of carrying one with you when you shop.

Label readers eat healthier according to two new reports in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association. And healthy eating helps you to live a healthier life. Click here to read more about these studies.

If you're not knowledgeable about food additives, then reading ingredients lists may be a big challenge. But, don't dismay, there's help available. Get started right now with some Free Food Additives Tips.

Umami Is Not U-Friend!

Umami, also known as Taste No. 5, is a flavor enhancer. It is free glutamic acid; i.e. hidden MSG. As you may already know, if you've read anything about the adverse effects of MSG, it is a neurotoxin and excititoxin. It excites your brain cells to death.

Something you might not know is that umami is hidden in certain foods. You can guess that it might be in the product if you read the label very carefully. For example, from the Umani website...

•  Parmesan cheese is one of the most umami rich foods in the world
• The condiment Marmite, contains even more umami than Parmesan cheese
• Cheddar cheese also contains umami

The ingredients in Kraft Parmesan Cheese are ...
Parmesan Cheese (Pasteurized Part-Skim Milk, Salt, Less than 2% of Enzymes, Cheese Culture, Cellulose Powder to Prevent Caking, Potassium Sorbate to Protect Flavor)

Unless you know other names of hidden MSG, you might not guess that Parmesan cheese contains MSG at all. The clue here is "enzymes."

According to the Truth in Labeling website, enzymes often contain free glutamic acid, which is a hidden source of MSG. What I find astounding is that parmesan cheese has such astronomical levels of MSG with enzymes being the main indicator of it's presence.

Make sure you check for hidden MSG in everything. AND ... Don't underestimate the amount of MSG potentially in a product by the ingredients list. It can be very deceptive.

Learn more about harmful food additives and get free food additives tips here.

Artificial Flavors

Do you ever wonder what gives artificially flavored foods their orange, grape, cherry or pineapple flavoring?

These flavors may taste somewhat similar to the real thing, but in terms of safety, watch out!

You'll find some of these fake flavors in processed foods like beverages, baked goods, ice cream, candy, gelatin desserts, puddings, ices, chewing gum, icings and even in vitamins.

Most of these artificial flavors have not been adequately tested.

With the little bit that is known about their safety, many are "harmful if swallowed or absorbed through the skin." Some are "toxic if ingested." At least one that I know of "can be fatal if inhaled." It's also toxic when you eat it.

Because manufacturers are not required to disclose the chemicals used in creating their artificial flavors, you don't know which toxic chemicals are in the flavorings in the packaged foods you buy, or how toxic they are.

Make sure there are NO artificial flavors in the foods you buy for yourself or your famly.

Click here to get Free Food Additives Tips and learn more about the safety of the additives in your food.

Is Splenda a Healthy Sweetener?

Splenda is chlorinated sugar. It's an artificial sweetener that can actually be made totally from chemicals, without any sugar.

The manufacturer claims that it is not metabolized by the body. However, according to the FDA it is partially absorbed and metabolized by the body, 11-27%. And according to the Japanese Food Council it is 40% absorbed and metabolized.

It's promoted as a safe sweetener with zero calories. However, there have been no long-term human studies on the safety of Splenda, and no studies on its safety for children and pregnant women.

Animal studies have shown Splenda to cause shrunken thymus gland, enlarged liver and kidneys, miscarriage and diarrhea. Small amounts of dangerous contaminants have been detected, such as heavy metals, methanol, arsenic and more.

Those with chlorine allergies may suffer severe reactions to splenda.

Bottom line, although Splenda is not as harmful as aspartame, it is definitely NOT a safe sweetener.

Learn more about food additives and get FREE Food Additives Tips here.

Aspartame, What You Don't Know Can Hurt You!

Aspartame is one of the most toxic food additives on the market today. It's in over 4000 different products. It can mimic a variety of diseases that you may be taking drugs for when you don't even have the disease, but instead you may have aspartame poisoning.

Find out more about the deadly effects of aspartame here. If you use aspartame, even if you don't have any known adverse effects, you still need to read this.

Learn how you can avoid the harmful effects of food additives in the food you eat every day.

Food Additives Tips

Do you check the food packages before you buy to see if the ingredients contain any harmful food additives?

If you've ever looked at an ingredients list, you probably found that there were a lot of words that you didn't recognize. Those are the chemical additives that food manufacturers add to the food they produce to make it look better, give it a better texture and give it a shelf life of a year or more.

Many of these chemicals that manufacturers add to your food are harmful. Some even cause cancer.

Learn more about protecting yourself and your family from harmful chemicals in your food with Free Food Addtives Tips.

Sign up now! You'll be glad you did. Remember, it's free and you'll be doing your health a BIG favor.