Everyday, the foods we eat contain a handful of ingredients, some well known, others we’re unable to pronounce. The food industry is responsible for listing these ingredients for consumers to read, but that is the limit to their responsibility. It is not required that they explain ingredients or the effects they can have on the body. After tracking my food intake, I found I only knew a handful of the ingredients. Out of the ingredients I didn’t know, three ingredients stuck out to me and I decided to research what these ingredients where made of, how they affect the body, and why the food industry included them in their products. Learning about these ingredients opened my eyes to what I was really putting in my body and the affects ingredients …show more content…
Maltodextrin is a white powder that is created from corn, rice, potato starch or wheat, and although it comes from plants, it’s highly processed (Shaefer and Baker, 2016). The process of making maltodextrin involves cooking the starches, and then adding acids or enzymes, which increases the breakdown (Shaefer and Baker, 2016). Once the process of creating maltodextrin is complete, the final product is a white powder that is water-soluble, has a neutral taste, and is used to thicken processed foods (Shaefer and Baker, 2016). The process of making meltodextrin is inexpensive and because of its neutral taste, the food industry uses it in a handful of food items such as dressings, yogurts, spices and chips (Is Maltodextrin bad for you, n.d). Maltodextrin is found in more foods than MSG, high fructose corn syrup, and hydrogenated oils, and overall has more good than bad affects, but has not created the same hype as these other ingredients (Is Maltodextrin bad for you, n.d). This ingredient has been able to stay under the radar because it doesn’t have to be labeled as a sugar, and is often used by dietary companies, which leads people to believe it is healthy (Is Maltodextrin bad for you, n.d). When used in dietary products maltodextrin may
National Academy of Sciences (U.S.). Sweeteners: Issues and Uncertainties. Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, 1975.
Aspartame, or more commonly known as NutraSweet, Equal, Spoonful and Equal Measure; was discovered purely by chance in 1965 by a chemist named James M. Schlatter, who was testing an antacid drug (Prantini; 2014). The commercial industry believed that “a wonder product” had been discovered, which stood to revolutionise the food industry as an artificial sweetener. Aspartame is an artificial sweetener which is found in many of our foods and beverages universally. Aspartame is two-hundred times sweeter than sugar and is commonly used as a tabletop sweetener, a sweetener in prepared foods, diet foods or drinks, flavored waters, chewing gum, condiments and is even found in flavoring of medicines. It is found in majority of our food products marketed for weight control (Prantini; 2014). Aspartame has a sweeter taste in comparison to sugar, and therefore less of the sweetener can be used in food products in order to achieve the same level of sweetness as if sugar was used; which results in an individual consuming fewer calories and less sugar (American Cancer Society; 2014).
The book Salt, Sugar, and Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us discusses the danger of food with its readers. The dangers of food discussed in the book are the ingredients of Salt, Sugar and Fat in the food individuals consume on a daily basis. Producers use these ingredients to their advantage to get the consumers bliss point. The bliss point attained is used by the food giants to achieve a profit. However due to research on the health risks of these ingredients food companies are strategizing in order to maintain their profit and earn more of a profit.
In the documentary, Food Inc., we get an inside look at the secrets and horrors of the food industry. The director, Robert Kenner, argues that most Americans have no idea where their food comes from or what happens to it before they put it in their bodies. To him, this is a major issue and a great danger to society as a whole. One of the conclusions of this documentary is that we should not blindly trust the food companies, and we should ultimately be more concerned with what we are eating and feeding to our children. Through his investigations, he hopes to lift the veil from the hidden world of food.
Some might complain about the guilt they feel knowing they are willingly consuming sodium benzoate and soybean oil. Which, according to Warner, isn’t a bad thing. If one is buying a blueberry muffin, most likely, they’d be interested to know that those “blueberry” pieces are the result of an experiment. If it was common knowledge that out of the 5,000 additives found in food barely a half has been tested, American’s would ponder their diet. While change is never easy, it isn’t hard to spark a movement towards change. This is evident with the shift towards eating better. Perhaps it will amount to no more than a trend, but throughout history, science has never surpassed the natural world. That is why the natural world has survived as long as it can, because, in many ways, it’s the best you can get. Pandora’s Lunchbox possess the ability to spark something more than a general knowledge of cereal factories.
With all the unregulated dietary supplements being sold and recommended, our health insurance costs will continue to rise. If the product causes severe side effects, it should no longer be permitted to be sold in stores. The only way to touch the minds of many people is to inform them of the dangers of consuming dietary supplements. Disposing of all incorrect information in product labeling and ingredient lists is important. People need to recognize the faults that plague many advertisements. In addition businesses should promote safe products instead of the harmful ones that they advocate for. The United States Congress should consider regulating dietary supplements to maintain safety. If people are aware of the many lies companies present, then dietary supplements will be one less problem to worry about.
This experiment is based on being able to properly isolate/purify trimyristin from nutmeg and synthesize myristic acid from trimyristin. Liquid-solid extraction and recrystallization are the techniques used to isolate/purify the trimyristin from nutmeg. Base hydrolysis is the technique used to synthesize the myristic acid from trimyristin. Isolating trimyristin from nutmeg is considered natural product chemistry. Natural product chemistry involves isolating organic compounds from living things, such as plants (Weldegirma 2016). Usually, natural product chemistry is complicated, intensive, and tedious. However, the isolation of trimyristin is not very difficult because a large portion of nutmeg is made up of trimyristin. Trimyristin is a unique triglyceride, as all three of its fatty acid groups are identical.
Many academic, scientific, and regulatory organizations are considering ways to establish the scientific basis to support and further validate claims for functional components or the foods containing them. Consumer interest in the relationship between diet and health has increased the demand for information about functional foods. More recently, the food industry, the agricultural community, and now consumers have shown a growing interest in the field of...
There was a feud between feminists who wanted flibanserin regardless of the side effects, and FDA who believed the approval for safety of flibanserin was an elongated process. This paper will explain the six reasons why flibanserin had been mistakenly approved by FDA.
For years, I have been eating what I want. Food choices are a significant factor that affects our health. What we like or crave, often, is the determining variable in what we eat. Finding the right balance of food choices is the key factor in improving our health benefits. Choosing nutrient-dense foods will provide more nutritional value than foods that are found to be low in nutrient density. Making the right choices in foods, however, is extremely difficult. Often, I find myself enthralled in the latest fad, not considering the subtext of the foods I am eating, such as nutrients, vitamins, healthy fats and unhealthy fats, cholesterol and minerals. The diet project underlined a three-day food entry intake that provided a dietary analysis report
Daily, millions of people are perusing the grocery store, buying food for their families, completely unaware of what they are purchasing. A study on consumer research regarding food labels by the FDA found only a small percentage of people actually read the food labels and understand what they mean apart from only the calories and fat; ingredients are another story. “According to a study published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, about 61.5 percent reported using the nutrition facts panel when deciding to purchase food. Fewer people paid attention to the list of ingredients” (CNN Health). The FDA is aware that labeling could help reverse the acceleration we are seeing in heart diseases and obesity, but labeling does not help people to read the ingredients if they do not understand pseudonyms, and vitamins. “The surveys also revealed frequent misunderstanding of the meaning of the daily/value column that shows how each nutrient fits into a healthy diet, “(American journal Nutrition, WEB). Many different harmful ingredients are secretly hidden in labels and people skimming ov...
Maize also has uses beyond being used as a food source or being turned into oil. Maize’s main use is for food, but it can be used in creative ways. For example the popped kernels of maize, commonly referred to as ‘popcorn’ is seasoned and coated in different ways in order to make the ethnic foods of Vietnam and Peru. Corn is also used to create basic alternative medicines and herbal supplements using the corn silk, but this use is not often capitalized on. The starches from maize are a major source of material for products like plastics, fabrics, and adhesives. Also a by-product from the maize ‘wet milling’ process called ‘corn step liquor’ is of a major use to the biochemical industry because it is a perfect culture to grow many kinds of m...
More and More people are becoming concerned about what they eat, especially if they consume food products that are manufactured in food industries. However, it is hard to know what exactly you are consuming if food industries provide false nutrition content and mislead consumers by placing false advertisements on the packaging. When a company produces a product that contains misleading label, consumers are not receiving complete information about the food they are eating which could lead to health issues including allergies and problems with diabetes.
Food extrusion is a high-temperature short-time process “HTST” which utilizes a combination of temperature, pressure, and shear force to convert the moistened starchy and proteinaceous raw materials into highly expanded, low-density products with unique physicochemical properties. Advantages of extrusion process include improving digestibility by gelatinization of starch, denaturation of proteins and inactivation of anti-nutritional factors such as trypsin inhibitors. In addition, the high temperature applied during extrusion cooking ensures hygienic quality. The degradation of food nutrients through extrusion process was minimized due to the short time of heating treatment (Singh et al. 2014; Mouquet et al.
Starch-based snacks and ready-to-eat breakfast cereal continue to increase in sales worldwide. Starch-based snacks are commonly made in the form of puffed products. Puffed products are appreciated mainly for their lightness and crispness. These qualities are related to the air cellular structure and degree of expansion. Puffing is a process used for engineering structures and properties of food materials to give a light, airy and crispy texture (Nath and Chattopadhyay, 2008; Mariotti et al., 2006). Process for making starch-based puffed products includes gelatinization of starch, cooling, drying, and then explosive expansion (Hoke et al., 2007). After starch gelatinization, retrogradation of starch molecules, amylose and amylopectin occurred during cooling and aging of the pastes (Perdon et al., 1999; Ji et al., 2007; Mariotti et al., 2009). The amylose-amylopectin ratio, which commonly reported in term of amylose content, has been known to be an important parameter affecting physical properties of starch pastes/gels and characteristics of puffed products (Hibi and Hikone, 1998; Boischot et al., 2003; Cheow et al., 2004; Saeleaw and Schleining, 2010). The retrograded amylose prepared for the crystal nuclei, which can increase the nuclei crystal growth, so the higher amylose content, the faster starch retrograded (Biliaderis, 1992) which showed high retrogradation enthalpy (Vandeputte et al., 2003; Narpinder et al., 2006) and provided the harder gel. For rice flour mixtures, the higher amylose content gave the higher density, but the lower expansion ratio of puffed products (Chen and Yeh, 2001). The effects of AC on gel physical properties and puffed product characteristic were commonly done by mixing two different amylose conte...