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Food Modified and Treated

 
What Is, or Is Not, in Your Food?
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The U.S. FDA lists over 3,000 substances that are allowed to be added to foods in America today. Food additives may be salt, sugars, preservatives, emulsifiers, stabilizers, vitamins, minerals, spices, flavors and colors.
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These additives may be from whole food sources or synthetically made.
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Sometimes to keep food from spoiling, parts of the whole food is removed when it is commercially prepared.  For example, a kernel of grain is composed of four parts: the germ, endosperm, bran, and husk.  When refined into white flour or bread often the husk, bran and germ are removed leaving the item nutritionally deficient.  The germ contains the vitamins and minerals, and the bran contains the fiber.
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Why are These Items Added or Removed?
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Substances are added to food for a specific purpose.  For example, emulsifiers like carboxymethyl cellulose, an artificial emulsifier, are added to provide the food with consistent texture and prevent them from separating.
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Other times substances are removed, such as the germ from grain kernels, to prevent the product from spoiling quickly.
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How Does the Addition or Removal of Food Substances Affect Health?
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Some FDA listed additives have been linked to disease processes.  For example, the emulsifier carboxymethyl cellulose has been found to lessen the bodies ability to defend against intestinal pathogens and may lead to inflammatory bowel disease, or IBD (Glade & Maguid, 2016).
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When vital parts of whole foods are removed, the food becomes nutrient-deficient.  When these nutrient-deficient foods become a large part of the diet, as is the case for many Americans, nutrient deficiency can occur and lead to chronic illnesses.
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Pesticide and Herbicide Food Treatment:
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Pesticides and herbicides are chemical substances used to kill pests, such as insects and rodents, or unwanted plants or fungus.
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Some commonly used chemicals today include organophosphates, carbamate insecticides, dithiocarbamate fungicide, and phenoxyl herbicides.
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Synthetic Chemical use Today:
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There have been more than 80,000 new synthetic chemicals invented and used over the past several decades (Landrigan & Goldman, 2011).
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Pesticides are commonly used in agriculture, fishery, forestry, and the food industry.
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Herbicides are commonly used in American agricultural practices and are found in the surface water and air today.
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The Effect of Pesticides and Herbicides on the Body:
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About 300,000 worldwide deaths per year are attributed to acute pesticide poisoning, with organophosphates reported as the most frequent cause.  Further, commonly used organophosphates, such as chlorpyrifos, are associated with children's developmental delays, reduced head circumference and potential for forms of autism, when the child is exposed prenatally (Landrigan & Goldman, 2011). 
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Pesticides have been linked to respiratory issues such as airway irritation, and breathlessness and wheezing as they impair lung function.
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Pesticides are toxic to the human nervous system.
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Pesticides have been associated with diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, renal impairment, and cancer, among other conditions.
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