I know several people who won’t eat foods with preservatives. They’ll eat junk like potato chips and corn chips, as long as the bag says “no preservatives” on it.
Why, exactly are preservatives bad?
Presumably because they are man-made chemicals, and anything man-made can’t be good for you (not that I prescribe to this line of thought; it just seems to be the general attitude).
Potato and corn chips, sans preservatives, are “all natural”, even if not “all healthy”.
“Presumably because they are man-made chemicals…”
But salt, sugar, and vinegar are all preservatives (think of ham, preserves, and pickles) and people usually don’t consider them “man-made.”
It’s the artificial preservatives that are “bad”. Not preservatives in general.
Yeah, but why exactly are they bad? What danger are they to ones health?
Some people are sensitive to certain food additives, for example Sulphur Dioxide (frequently used as a preservative for dried fruit) can aggravate respiratory problems such as athsma, so labelling the foodstuffs enables people who know they are at risk to make an informed choice.
Some people think they have allergies to sulfites. Other preservatives are suspected of causing cancer. Still others like BHA, BHT (butylated hydroxy anisole and butylated hydroxy toluene) have names that cause organic chemists to shudder and wonder how it was ever discovered that such a thing was non-toxic in the first place.
The last I scanned the literature on this there wasn’t much evidence that any of these artificial preservatives were harmful, but it’s not unreasonable for people to wonder what even trace amounts of new and peculiar chemicals might be doing to their bodies. Industries record on the safety of new food additives is pretty good, but it’s not perfect.
I know people who regard “preservatives” and “chemicals” as poison; and IMHO this attitude often stems from ignorance. People not realising that the whole world is made up of “chemicals” & such.
There was a letter to the gardening experts in the local paper today. Someone was opposed to the use of pesticides fopr their lawn (because those are evil man made chemicals, right?) So they wanted to know if spraying household bleach all over their yard was was an eco-friendly alternative. :rolleyes:
There is a lot of knee-jerk fear about ‘chemicals’ but the fact that much of it is irrational and misinformed doesn’t automatically qualify any and every food aditive/pesticide etc as completely devoid of harmful side-effects.
There is an extensive testing and evaluation process that any additive must go through in order to be classified as safe, however, nobody can predict the unpredictable, the tests that are carried out today are way better than those, say ten years ago, but the point is that ten years ago, we were prepared to accept them as adequate.
It may, however, be a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul; foods without synthetic additives may contain higher levels of bacteria and other pathogens, which in turn may cause all manner of illness, including cancer, so preservative-free foods may or may not be ‘better’ for you than preserved ones.