Regular health advice includes avoiding processed food. However, sometimes we are not aware what processed food really is, or even what makes it ‘processed’.
A new book has been published which offers an insight into the myths and facts about food in general. Sometimes, having knowledge of what effect food has on your body or how it has materialised into its present form helps your choice of whether or not to eat it. It also helps us decide how often to eat a certain food, knowing the effect on our bodies.
My mother always told me that you should never swallow chewing gum. It may have helped, when I was a child, if she had told me what it was made of.
On reflection, she probably didn’t know herself. The basis of chewing gum is an ingredient called butyl rubber , an ingredient originally developed in the 1930s for use in bicycle tyre inner tubes. Today, it is found in the gloves we use to wash up in, Clingfilm and rugby balls.
In chewing gum the food-friendly form of butyl rubber is combined with flavourings and colourings to give a palatable, non-toxic substance. So it sounds unsuitable for swallowing. However, if you swallowed a piece (and I am sure we all have at some time), it would pass through your intestines, being attacked by your saliva, which will attempt to break it down, as it does all the food that passes through.
Of course, it will be totally unsuccessful and the chewing gum will continue its way through our bodies and be passed out the other end, usually in the same format in which it was swallowed.
However there is a warning. If the swallowing of gum becomes a habit, the substance can become an indigestible mass inside the body. Food and other foreign objects can stick to it and this, in turn, will cause an intestinal blockage.
In children this can be very serious as they have a much narrower digestive tract than adults. So perhaps it is advisable to heed the warning, don’t swallow gum. At the same time, ponder on the thought that it is rubber, a strange thing to be chewing on.
Salt has a huge effect on our health in general. The population definitely absorbs too much salt in most foods, especially processed foods. It has been said recently that salt is more dangerous than sugar for our long-term health.
More and more people are turning to sea salt for use in cooking, believing it to be more natural. At the end of the day, it is still salt. It is also more expensive, so is it worth it? Ironically, all salt comes from the sea. The difference is that sea salt producers use water deposits from today’s oceans, while table salt is mined from deposits left by evaporated oceans of previous geological eras.
It has been said that salt is more dangerous than sugar for our long-term health
The key issue is the texture of the salt. In table salt, the tiny crystals are cube-shaped so only a sixth of their surface is in touch with your tongue at any one time. They have often passed into your digestive tract before the taste has been registered.
In contrast, the large, flat surface of sea salt crystals dissolve quickly, therefore, they release the taste of salt into the mouth. The arguments for and against are based on these differences. Perhaps training our tastebuds to respond to herbs and other natural additives to our food would be a better way to eat.
The subject of caffeine is huge, mainly because it plays a big part in our daily lives. Even more so now that there is an epidemic of coffee shops selling expensive coffees of every variety in all shopping areas. Caffeine is not only found in coffee. It is in tea, cola, chocolate, and other fizzy drinks, especially those that give you wings.
In a year, in the UK, the average person can spend between £16,000 and £25,000 on take-out coffee. Caffeine is the world’s most widely consumed psychoactive drug. The addiction to caffeine is known as caffeinism.
Many years ago, during a detox, I stopped drinking coffee and felt the side effects of detoxing from this substance. It truly was an addiction I didn’t know I even had. As a result, I haven’t drunk coffee since.
A daily intake of more than 600mg of caffeine (five to six cups of brewed coffee or eight to 10 cups of instant) may indicate that you have this problem.
The effects can lead to nervousness, muscle twitching, insomnia, heart palpitations, stomach upsets and abnormally fast breathing, among other things.
This has fuelled a market for decaffeinated coffee. How does this process occur? The oldest way of decaffeinating coffee involves using an industrial solvent called methylene chloride, a highly toxic, volatile liquid with a propensity for causing cancer of the lungs, liver and other cancers in tests on laboratory animals.
The EU banned its use in hair spray and paint stripper but say that it is safe in amounts of three parts per million. In most decaff coffee tests, it shows up at 1ppm.
Additionally, the boiling point of MC is 40˚C and coffee is roasted at 190-218˚C, so theoretically, any remaining solvent should be vaporised before it reaches your cup.
More interesting facts about your everyday food can be found in Food Unwrapped: Lifting the Lid on How Our Food is Really Produced by Daniel Trapper, published by Bantam.
kathryn@maltanet.net