Food Additives
Why There Should be a Limit on Food Additives For many centuries people have been adding things to preserve foods. An example of this is using salt to preserve meats or adding herbs to enhance the flavor of any other type of food. In recent years, however, the amount of additives in food has dramatically increased, and some of the items that are being added have been questioned by scientists as well as some consumers. Some additives have been known to cause sickness and contribute to the formation of cancerous cells in various parts of the body in laboratory animals. This is why the FDA should limit the amounts of artificial ingredients added to foods. One of the most noticeable of food additives is the food colorings that are in nearly every product. The main component of food colorings is petroleum (Total Health Clinic). Petroleum is also known as oil. This is the same oil that is used for gasoline, diesel, rubber cement, and food colorings. Now if people think about all the warnings they see at a gasoline station about the harm of breathing in the vapors from gasoline and diesel why would they want this in their foods? While people from the opposing side would state that these colorings help to appeal to the taste of the consumers by giving them a product that is bright and colorful. There are natural colorings that are actually helpful to the body such as beet juices, carotene, and others that can be extracted from naturally occurring plants. One of the biggest concerns is the amounts of artificial colorings used in almost every product. Yellow 5 has been questioned constantly about its effects on the body since it is “the second-most-widely used coloring” (“Chemical Cuisine”). This dye is used mainly in candies and chips. It has been known to cause, “allergy-like hypersensitivity reactions, primarily in aspirin-sensitive persons” (“Chemical Cuisine”). This would affect asthmatic people over almost any other group. This information was
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