Why You Should Limit Processed Foods

We all know we shouldn’t indulge in processed foods. But many of us might not know why we shouldn’t. Did you know that there are thousands of hidden food additives that are allowed to slip through the cracks of the FDA? Currently, there are about 10,000 food additives and chemicals swirling around in the US food supply. Some of the more dangerous food additives that have been gaining more and more attention lately are mono- and di-glycerides, which belong to a class of emulsifiers. These have been increasingly circulating within our food systems as a way around the trans-fat problem. Trans-fats have been removed from ingredient lists across the country due to the increased understanding of the health problems to which they have been linked. However, this elimination has been performed in name only as trace amounts of trans-fats are still allowed to be added to foods. Not to mention that the introduction of these emulsifiers (the mono- and di-glycerides) has allowed them to basically act as artificial trans-fats, and they have been shown to be related to causing coronary heart disease as well as have been linked by the Center for Science in the Public Interest to nearly 50,000 fatal heart attacks a year.