Kevin Klatt, PhD, RD

I've been meaning to start a series on food additives and why they're in foods. Often, food ingredients list a lot of words that people don't understand and.or know their purpose/safety - despite what one might hear, not being able to pronounce a word on a food label is not a reason to not consume that food. Words on the food label like Pantothenic Acid and Pyridoxine might sound frightening, but they're actually just vitamins B5 and B6. There's unfortunately much fearmongering that surrounds food additives that often strays far from science or even precautionary principles, so I figured i'd do a little mini-series on the topic. What better way to segue into this  than with the recent talk of propylene glycol  in Fireball, a popular cinnamon flavored whiskey.The story was reported on here . Fireball was recalled in Europe, after an American shipment was sent overseas. The amount of propylene glycol allowed in American Fireball is different than Europe, so it w...

Raw for Beauty.com When I hear people talk about things being 'toxic', I cringe a bit. Merriam dictionary defines toxic as "containing or being poisonous material especially when capable of causing death or serious debilitation" . It's colloquial usage has deviated far from the true definition, with every food and substance being subject to the term. Recent concerns regarding the toxicity of food products, like ones made by Food-Babe minded folks discussing  chemicals in pumpkin spice lattes , often fail to mention the dose of the questionable compound, and when this is pointed out, they retort that there is a lack of long-term data on the topic in humans and invoke the precautionary principle. mercola.com In determining the toxicity of chemicals (be they vitamins, hormones, or environmental chemicals), there are always gaps in the data. Nothing in science is so certain that more data couldn't refine our understanding- indeed, we have no huma...

Vani Hari, AKA the FoodBabe, shared on her Facebook page today a post about 'toxic' glucose solutions used in OGTTs for pregnant women. You can find her post  here . The article focuses on the brominated vegetable oil (BVO) content of this drink, after expressing delight that Coke/Pepsi are removing BVO from their products, which I'm sure she'll now consume copious amounts of.. Before we get into the toxicity data on BVO, why is BVO added to drinks? Well, it's not to a government-conspiracy to poison consumers. Citrus oils are added to beverages, usually soft drinks, as a clouding/flavor agent. However, these oils are less dense than the water-sugar mixture, so small amounts of brominated vegetable oil are dissolved in the citrus oil to increase their density and keep them in suspension. Alternative weighting agents do exist in the forms of damar gums, ester gums, and sucrose diacetate hexaisobutyrate (Fennema's Food Chemistry,4th Edition, 2008). Regarding...