Do we really know what is in our food???

To begin with I have a soap box and frequently get on it. My husband bugs me about it, but I feel I need to say some things, want the world to know about them and that is partially why I started this blog.

I think the world is getting farther and farther away from family values and good eating. I admit I am big on whatever is convenient is easier, but is that the way to go? We watched a very interesting movie over the holidays, Food Inc. My impression when I heard of this movie was that it was about our meat and why you should go vegetarian or vegan. I was wrong, this movie was about our food, yes, it included meat, chicken and pork, but also corn, soybeans and other foods. Do we really know now a day’s where our food comes from and what goes in it? I know I don’t and this movie was an eye opener for me. Granted this was made in the U.S. about the U.S. food industry, but how much affects us in Canada? I have a lot of questions and over the next couple of weeks am going to be doing some research on the Canada aspect of our food industry.

Here is a brief summary of the movie: the way we eat has changed more in the last 50 years, then ever before. We have McDonald’s to blame for the way meat is now processed; they are the ones that moved away from the sit down diners, car hops to the fast food chains. This meant that food needed to be grown faster to keep up with the demand. Cows are fed corn, something they don’t normally eat, which is grass. The introduction of corn into a cow’s diet has led to E-Coli, they now “clean” meat with an ammonia mixture to kill the E-Coli before it is packaged for sale, YUCK! A company in the states has the market cornered on soybeans, they have patented the soybeans and if a farmer is caught using their own soybeans this company can sue them for copyright infringement. Sounds fair? Every time we go to the grocery store and our food is scanned, we are saying to the companies producing these foods that we are going to eat all the chemicals they are adding to our foods. We don’t eat in season anymore, fruits and vegetables are available to us 365 days of the year, which means they need to be shipped half way around the world for us to eat “fresh”, which leads to them being treated with chemicals to make sure they doesn’t spoil on the way. The movie is also about how the farm workers are being treated and it's not well.  It's hard to believe that companies still exploit their workers, but they do.  Okay, that’s enough of my soap box, I hope everyone watches this movie and starts asking questions.  Here are some links to the website:

http://www.foodincmovie.com/about-the-issues.php
http://www.foodincmovie.com/about-the-film.php

I decided that I am going to pull a convinience food out of my pantry, check the labels and start researching an ingredient. So today I am looking at "100% Whole Grain Ritz Crackers", the ingredients list didn't look too bad, the first few items are whole grain wheat flour, vegetable oil shortening, sugar and salt. Hmm, not too bad, but then there are a few I’m not sure of monocalcium phosphate, soya lecithin, amylase, protease and papain. Does anyone know what those are?

From Wikipedia:

Monocalcium phosphate: Calcium dihydrogen phosphate is also used in the food industry as a leavening agent to cause baked goods to rise. Because it is acidic, when combined with an alkali ingredient – commonly sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) or potassium bicarbonate – it reacts to produce carbon dioxide and a salt. The carbon dioxide gas is what leavens the baked good. When combined in a ready-made baking powder, the acid and alkali ingredients are included in the right proportions such that they will exactly neutralize each other and not significantly affect the overall pH of the product.

Apart from acting as leavening agent, it also inhibits microbial activity because of the phosphate ions present in the molecule.

 Soya Lecithin: Lecithin is used commercially in foods requiring a natural emulsifier and/or lubricant, and in pharmaceuticals as protective coverings. For example, lecithin is the emulsifier that keeps cocoa and cocoa butter in a candy bar from separating. In margarines, especially those containing high levels of fat (>75%), lecithin is added as an 'anti-spattering' agent for shallow frying.

 Amylase: Amylase enzymes finds use in bread making and to break down complex sugars such as starch (found in flour) into simple sugars. Yeast then feeds on these simple sugars and converts it into the waste products of alcohol and CO2. This imparts flavour and causes the bread to rise. While Amylase enzymes are found naturally in yeast cells, it takes time for the yeast to produce enough of these enzymes to break down significant quantities of starch in the bread. This is the reason for long fermented doughs such as sour dough. Modern bread making techniques have included amylase enzymes (often in the form of malted barley) into bread improver thereby making the bread making process faster and more practical for commercial use.

When used as a food additive Amylase has E number E1100, and may be derived from swine pancreas or mould mushroom.

Workers in factories that work with amylase for any of the above uses are at increased risk of occupational asthma. 5-9% of bakers have a positive skin test, and a fourth to a third of bakers with breathing problems are hypersensitive to amylase.

Protease: I couldn’t find on Wikepedia what this food additive does, but it did say that protease is used in many laundry detergents. Interesting!

Papain: Its utility is in breaking down tough meat fibers and has been utilized for thousands of years in its native South America. It is sold as a component in powdered meat tenderizer available in most supermarkets. Papain, in the form of a meat tenderizer such as Adolph's, made into a paste with water, is also a home remedy treatment for jellyfish, bee, yellow jacket (wasps) stings, mosquito bites, and possibly stingray wounds, breaking down the protein toxins in the venom. It is also the main ingredient in Stop Itch and Stop Itch Plus, a DermaTech Laboratories first aid cream popular in Australia.

Papain can be used to dissociate cells in the first step of cell culture preparations. A 10-minute treatment of small tissue pieces (less than 1 mm cubed) will allow papain to begin breaking down the extracellular matrix molecules holding the cells together. After 10 minutes, the tissue should be treated with a protease inhibitor solution to stop the protease action (if left untreated papain's activity will lead to complete lysis of the cells). The tissue must then be triturated (passed quickly up and down through a Pasteur pipette) in order to break up the pieces of tissue into a single cell suspension.

It is also used as an ingredient in various enzymatic debriding preparations, notably Accuzyme. These are used in the care of some chronic wounds to clean up dead tissue.

Papain can also be found as an ingredient in some toothpastes or mints as teeth-whitener. Its whitening effect in toothpastes and mints however is minimal, because the papain is present in low concentrations, and will be quickly diluted by saliva. It would take several months of using the whitening product to have noticeably whiter teeth.

So there you have it, some ingredients are used in laundry detergents, are made from swine pancreas or mould mushroom or used to clean up dead tissue, yummy!  Oh, don't get me wrong, I have all sorts of convinient foods in our pantry and I am eating these ingredients as well.  But this is something to think about...

I will post my menu for the week later today, but for now, think about what you eat and where it comes from.