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Additives: Look Before You Eat
Part 3: Artificial flavours
Artificial flavours are used to disguise the taste of poor quality
products. Smoked bacon is comparatively
expensive to produce, but dye ordinary bacon and use an artificial smoky
flavour and you can make more
profit.
And that is only part of the fraud. Bacon spits in a frying pan
because of the amount of water in it. Water
is also added to many other meat and fish products. The packet may say how much
extra has been added
— but it probably lies. Manufacturers are allowed to add a certain amount of water
without declaring the fact. The
amount of water they declare does not include the amount allowed; so if the
label says 'with 15% added
water', it really means 'with 15% added water on top off the amount I am
allowed to add without telling
you'.
People are demanding leaner meat so the fat is cut off it — but
it isn't thrown away. Manufacturers don't
throw a potential source of profit away. Once fat is cut off, it has little
value, so it is used as a cheap filler,
stuck together with additives to bulk out other products. We aren't eating less
fat, it is merely being sold
to us in a different, and more expensive, form.
Even though additives have to be listed on product labels, those
labels may only tell half the story, for
enzymes used in the processing of the product do not have to be listed. Enzymes
are used to tenderise
meat, to clean milk contaminated with antibiotics, to make modified starches
and in the baking and
brewing industries. Some of these enzymes are made from plant or animal tissue
but most are made by
microbial fermentation. Naturally the industry says that they are safe but
there have been a number of
reports of allergic reactions to them in workers in the industry. The
government's Food Additives and
Contaminants Committee published a report on enzymes in 1982. It recommended
that enzymes should
be regulated and that many should be placed in 'group B' because their safety
had not been proven.
Another example of where additives are not labelled is in the case
of cheese that is 'suitable for
vegetarians'. The rennet traditionally used to curdle milk in the cheese making
process is made from
animal products. So it is unacceptable to vegetarians. Many cheeses today are
made suitable for
vegetarians by using a form of synthesised vegetable rennet. In most British
cheeses this is genetically
modified soya. European labelling laws require that products containing
genetically modified materials
shall carry that information on their labels. Cheese 'suitable for
vegetarians', however, rarely does
because it is not an 'ingredient' but a part of the process of cheese making.
Additives in food are not only used to defraud — to make cheap
substitutes for real food at a profit, they
do it in a way that can have a profound effect on your health. Not just because
many are toxic but because
real food is replaced with cheaper ingredients and the fact disguised. Healthy,
additive-free butter is not
a great profit maker, but chemical-laden, unhealthy, low-fat spreads are. By
replacing real food with
artificial we risk various forms of malnutrition and deficiency diseases, a
situation which is particularly
worrying in the most vulnerable section of our society: the young. For
children, the consequences are
potentially catastrophic.
We have had legislation designed to protect the consumer for over
a century and it has had almost no
effect on the amount we are conned by the food industry. How do they get away
with it? Well,
government is advised by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Foods
(MAFF) various committees.
Many of the members of those MAFF committees are members of the food industry.
It is the food industry
that advises government and shapes policy. If the food industry wants
something, it gets it. Consumers
appear to have very little voice in the matter. The next time you shop in your
supermarket, look at the
labels. If the first, and thus the largest, ingredient is water, or if you
can't find any food among the
additives on the label, don't buy it. If we all get together and don't buy a
product, the manufacturers will
soon get the message and change. Write to your MP as well. If enough of us do
that, we might get
somewhere.
References:
Study by Shropshire Trading Standards Department on meat content of meat
products, pre and post 1984
Meat Products Regulations
, 1986, Shropshire County Council.
Millstone E.
Food Additives
. Penguin, London, 1986.
Aruoma OI, Halliwell B.
Free Radicals and Food Additives.
Taylor and Francis, London, 1991
Last updated 17 January 1999
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