Fast Food Ditches Unhealthy Ingredients… So What Were they Feeding Us Before? [1]
Source: www.theantimedia.org [2] | Original Post Date: May 30, 2015 –
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Recently, a multitude of fast food chains and other food companies have announced their transition toward healthier ingredients. However, it is immensely disturbing to learn about the ingredients being removed before making a switch to cleaner food.
Food giants such as Chipotle, Dunkin’ Donuts, McDonald’s, Coke, and more have been boasting about their transition to natural ingredients [4], (Chipotle even went completely non-GMO). Although the switch to healthier alternatives is a highly admirable gesture, it makes us wonder, well… what were we eating in the first place?!
To answer that question — we’ve basically been eating flame retardant, paint, sunscreen, and other common household items. Yup.
No, we kid. Or do we?
Surprisingly — and quite disturbingly — we actually HAVE been eating ingredients that can, indeed, be found in the aforementioned items.
For the sake of delving into the specifics of the most concerning findings, here it goes:
Dunkin’ Donuts will be eliminating what is known as titanium dioxide — a chemical that can be found in sunscreen, cosmetics, paints, and so on [5] — from its products. Dunkin’ Donuts used TiO2 (its scientific name) to give its powdered donuts a whiter and brighter appearance. Yum!
Coke will be discontinuing its use of brominated vegetable oil (BVO), which is pretty much flame retardant. Sounds thirst-quenching, right? Well, before you respond, let it be known that this chemical has been linked to several negative health effects [6] once it has been built up in fatty tissue.
Other additives from these major companies include dyes, artificial spices (i.e., fake black pepper), and antibiotics [7] which have been linked to a growth in drug-resistant bacteria, just to name a few.
Again, making our food healthier is a big step forward — and it is applaudable. But these startling discoveries lead us to wonder why some of these artificial ingredients and additives were deemed safe in the first place — and why it’s taken so long to begin eliminating them.
Written by Sydney Barakat [8] of www.theantimedia.org [2]
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